For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being ‘good enough’ or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and individual cares about doing it well. The solution, instead, is to look for what is holding the procrastinator back. If anxiety is the major barrier, the procrastinator actually needs to walk away from the computer/book/word document and engage in a relaxing activity. Being branded ‘lazy’ by other people is likely to lead to the exact opposite behaviour. Often, though, the carrier is that procrastinators have executive functioning challenges – they struggle to divide a large responsibility into a series of discrete, specific, and ordered tasks*
Many of our students have benefited from working with an Academic Coach, a tutor who is adept at strengthening and supporting executive functioning such as time management, organizational skills and chunking tasks and assignments. By cultivating these habits now, a student is well prepared for the rigours of higher education.
*Credit, Laziness Does Not Exist – But Unseen Barriers Do by Devon Price <humanparts.medium.com>
