The Hidden Benefits Of Procrastination

Imagine this, it is a first week of February your programming professor asked you to design a website which was to be due on 3rd week of the same month. You just acknowledged it and play your favorite online computer game. Afterwards, in the second week, your professor in networking and also your professor in Filipino announced that they will be having a quiz on next week which was the same week as your due on website. You just ignored it and play throughout the weekdays. Now the week is the third week of February which was your due on those requirements given by your three professors and panic began to settle in and finished your website at the eleventh hour, because instead of finishing it early to avoid the requirements to stacking in front of you, you have procrastinated it. There are many reasons why people tend to procrastinate, According psychology website the PsychToday it's because of what happening in our brain they are perfectionist, they think they have plenty of time, They have a low self esteem believing that they are not up to the task or having a low motivation but procrastinating are sometimes a good thing because when you procrastinate it can help be more creative, makes you focus and it also improves your decision making.

Procrastination can promote creativity because while an individual delayed their task to the last minute they are subconsciously thinking of an idea for the task that their procrastinating about. This is according to an article published by Moren. Additionally a 2017 study published by Wenling Liu where he conducted survey from eight universities in China if there is a relation between creativity and active procrastination. The research concluded that there is a big relation. Moreover, this was also supported by an experiment carried out by Jihae Shin, and it is composed of three group of students. They were asked to think of a business idea, the first group was told immediately to think of an idea. The second group is told to play five minutes of a computer game before allowing them to do the task. The last group is told to give the idea right away giving them a little time to think. It was concluded that the second group have the most creativity score by 28% other than the two groups.

Aside from the fact that procrastination makes you more creative another thing is that it makes you focus in the task given at hand. According to the article PsychologyToday since delaying the task and working under pressure removes any unnecessary distractions and instead focus on the important task at hand. Due to the fact that since your working under pressure and fear of the impending deadline our brain forces us to finish the task. This is supported by the study conducted by Chu & Choi (2005) which is when procrastinators working under a limited time and they are more likely to complete the task and having the feeling of contentment. Additionally a study made by Ariga & Lleras (2011) participants were asked to memorize a random digits of number and at the same time doing a certain task. Afterwards the participants were asked to recall the digits it returns a poor performance at the duration of the experiment. However, when they were being asked to perform the task ,the researchers interrupted the participants in an infrequent manner to recall the random digits given to them. They maintain a good performance of it. This means that taking short breaks on what you’re doing then coming back can improve your focus. This was also stated by psychologist Nick Wignall in the article published by Inc that an average person can not really focus on one thing in a long time. Thus it is recommended to take breaks from time to time.

Lastly, instead of addressing it right away. Procrastinators have improved decision on how they can approach the task when prolonging it. A study done by Ferrera, Grinbard & Teichert (2014) on how an individual tends to make better decisions when delaying it. The participants were quickly told to guess the dot in the computer screen whether if the movement war left or right and at the same time a second dot emerges in the screen to confusing the participants. When the two dots moved in the same direction the participants obviously got the correct answer. However the challenge is that when each of the dot moves different than each other. The participants got a high error rate. There was a second experiment same with the latter but this time the participants will answer if only they heard a clicking sound which was made by the researchers. The clicking sounds are to be heard between 17 to 500 milliseconds right after the participants began to watch the dot. This is similar to making split-seconds decision such as when driving a car. The results turn out that making delayed decision can improve decision making as the participants did well in the test.

References

• Ariga, A., & Lleras, A. (2011, March). Brief and rare mental 'breaks' keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21211793
• Can Procrastination Ever Be a Good Thing? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-age-anxiety/201104/can-procrastination-ever-be-good-thing
• DiSalvo, D. (2014, March 17). How A Tiny Bit Of Procrastination Can Help You Make Better Decisions. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/03/09/how-a-tiny-bit-of-procrastination-can-help-you-make-better-decisions/#66cbc9c6cc2e
• Kane, S. (2018, October 08). 10 Good and 10 Bad Things About Procrastination. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/10-good-and-10-bad-things-about-procrastination/
• Lesser, C. (2018, July 10). Many Creative Geniuses May Have Procrastinated-but That Doesn't Mean You Should. Retrieved from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-creative-geniuses-procrastinated
• Mack, E., & Mack, E. (2019, February 09). Procrastination Can Actually Make You More Productive (A Psychologist Has 3 Simple Steps). Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/eric-mack/procrastination-can-actually-make-you-more-productive-a-psychologist-has-3-simple-steps.html
• Miller, L. (2018, August 06). 4 Psychological Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Embrace Procrastination. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/316996
• Moran, C. (2015, December 21). 8 Reasons Why People Who Procrastinate Are More Creative. Retrieved from https://www.lifehack.org/347463/8-reasons-why-people-who-procrastinate-are-more-creative
• Teichert, T., Ferrera, V. P., & Grinband, J. (n.d.). Humans Optimize Decision-Making by Delaying Decision Onset. Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0089638