Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Better late than never

I'm sure there's something important you could be doing right now, but chances are you are waiting until the last minute to do it. It's ok: 90 percent of college students are guilty of procrastination, at least according to LiveScience. And now, thanks to a 10-year study, science has finally determined why people put things off until tomorrow ... sort of.

According to professor Piers Steel of the University of Calgary, we procrastinate because we are impulsive, and we need that jolt of pressure toward the end of a deadline to actually get tasks accomplished.

And here I thought I was just more productive in the morning; turns out that I just need that extra push to get things done.

Anyway, college students are impulsive by nature - really, how many times have you crammed for a test - so it makes sense that we are the largest contributors to the procrastination population. Out of the total population, procrastinators only make up 15 to 20 percent, which shows that we may eventually grow out of this awful habit.

Or it could just be an indication that 80 to 85 percent of the population doesn't use the Internet, which is the greatest procrastination tool since the television. It seems like we procrastinators thrive on instant gratification, and apparently Steel agrees.

"[Procrastinators] are the type of people who choose short-term gain and incur long-term pain," Steel told LiveScience.

Yep, that sounds like college: the land where the short term goal of having an active social life sometimes trump the long-term goal of graduating on time.

Granted, this is FAU. I'm sure there are plenty of students who don't get to graduate on time for reasons beyond their control, such as the small class sizes of many required courses and having to fight for department permission.

Anyway, for all you math people, Steel also says that procrastination can be described using the following formula:

U = E x V / I x D

According to Scientific American, U is a person's desire to finish the task (e.g. homework), E is the person's expectation of success, V is the value of the completed task, I is the immediacy in which the task needed to be done, and D is the person's sensitivity to delay.

I think the formula's just another excuse to waste time. I'm sure Steel used a considerable amount of time coming up with the formula when he could have been doing other things. I know I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the formula when I could have been doing homework.

Or, you know, surfing the internet.

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