Why people procrastinate (Essay Sample)

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Why People Procrastinate
Procrastination is a chronic behavior of deceptively justifying to oneself that cannot be started now. It involves postponement of an urgent task to a later time. Procrastination has become a serious problem: "In 2007, estimates of procrastination in college students ran as high as 75%, with 50% of the students reporting that they procrastinate consistently and consider it a problem." (Burka and Yuen, p.6). There are various reasons why people procrastinate, ranging from fear of failure, perfectionism, lack of rewards to lack of motivation and interest. The thesis of this paper states that procrastination leads to failure.
There are many reasons why people procrastinate. People procrastinate due to an intense fear of failure (Burns, p.4). Such people tell their conscience that doing something and failing is worse than not doing it at all. They, therefore, end up not doing the task at hand and find it easy to convince themselves that they failed because they did not do it. Similarly, perfectionists procrastinate out of fear of failure. Perfectionists will postpone a task in the hope that there would be an opportune moment for them to do their best. More often than not, the opportune moment fails to turn up and they run out of time, leading to the very failure they were avoiding. This clearly illustrate that procrastination leads to failure.
People also procrastinate due to lack of interest or motivation (Washington State University, n.p.). Procrastinators often feel that they should be sufficiently motivated in order to begin a task. This is their greatest folly because some tasks, such as school work, are compulsory and, therefore, one has to accomplish them whether they are motivated or not. Moreover, motivation in such tasks may lie in the performance of the task itself. People also procrastinate due to the knowledge that there will be no reward for performing the task.
There are many other reasons explaining the tendency of people to procrastinate (Ariely nd Wertenbroch, p.8). However, whatever the justification, procrastination leads to ...