Procrastination and its Psychological Impact on College Students

Abstract

Background
Procrastination is the negative behaviour defined as the failure to initiate or complete a task in a given amount of time. This behaviour has been observed in students, adults, and children of all ages and leads to procrastination in an academic setting, which brings negative outcomes such as stress, guilt, poor academic performance, and low self-esteem. It is important to recognise and fix this behaviour as early as possible to protect future careers. Academic procrastination is the act of intentionally delaying work that must be completed by a specific deadline. Multiple studies have been conducted over decades to understand the reasons why students procrastinate and how to curb this negative habit. Academic procrastination is task-dependent, and people exhibit procrastination in various behaviours and settings. Purpose of this study was to analyse the prevalence of procrastination and its psychological impact on college students in various domains – studying for examinations, completing assignments, presentations, academic administrative tasks, participating in group work and attending lectures.
Results
The results of this study showed that students nearly always procrastinated on tasks such as studying for examinations and keeping up with assignments, but there was a drop in the degree of procrastination when it came to administrative tasks. Reasons for procrastination in our study included fear of failure, perfectionism, lack of interest, lack of motivation, poor time management, and social anxiety. If a task is considered uninteresting and boring, it leads to a lack of motivation for the student to get started and the reasons for which are fear of failure, feelings of inadequacy, and peer pressure. Strict measures must be taken to motivate students against procrastination, such as proper discipline, gratification strategies, time management techniques, assertiveness training, setting realistic expectations and goals, and teaching the student to introspect and find the true reason for their task aversion and fixing it.
Further studies may explore the long-term psychological consequences of chronic procrastination via longitudinal designs and compare how different academic environments influence student’s coping mechanisms. Subsequently, it also focuses on identifying causal pathways between emotional regulation, academic stress, and procrastination, particularly through experimental-based models.