As assignments pile up, extracurriculars grow in intensity, and having a social life becomes a struggle, many students get caught in the cycle of procrastination. According to psychotherapist Abbey Pelosi, putting things off is a common struggle for high school students. While a common belief is that procrastination is closely connected to laziness, Pelosi said procrastination is more commonly connected to stress, anxiety, and perfectionism.
Pelosi described procrastination as a cycle, often stemming from discomfort intolerance: when a task feels overwhelming or uninteresting, students may avoid it leading to an increase in stress and anxiety. As stress builds, the student is more likely to continue avoiding the task, making a difficult cycle to break.
“Then you can see where that cycle goes, round and round,” Pelosi said. You feel stressed about something, then you avoid it, and then you don’t do it, and then you feel more stressed, and avoid it again.”
Maricruz Aguayo, LASA’s AP Psychology teacher, agrees that procrastination is rarely about laziness. Instead, she suggests that there are deeper underlying reasons.
“True procrastination, when something has to get done and it’s not getting done for a variety of reasons, often has more complex causes,” Aguayo said. “A big one, especially post-COVID, is anxiety or depression.”
A study done by the World Health Organization cites an increase in global depression of 25% since COVID-19. The pandemic also caused difficult adjustments for learning. “During that time, students were in a system where expectations were much lower than before,” Aguayo said. “Now that we’re post-COVID, expectations have shifted back, but that adjustment has been difficult for some.”
Pelosi said COVID also contributed to procrastination by increasing distractions. When learning moved online during the pandemic, students gained access to technology that hindered concentration on assignments. This dependency on technology has continued, and the distractions have come with it.
“If I have my phone in front of me, 15 tabs open on my favorite websites, or a video game running in the background, it’s easy to get sidetracked,” Pelosi said. “Trying to minimize those distractions can help. With COVID, our whole world moved online, especially for teenagers and middle schoolers who are now in high school.”
Procrastination often follows predictable patterns. Aguayo has seen spikes in procrastination in the months of October and March due to busy times for extracurriculars. However, she pointed out that what may appear as procrastination is more likely prioritization.
“When extracurricular activities pick up, I see students prioritizing certain assignments over others,” Aguayo said. “As a teacher, what I notice is that students aren’t turning in work for my class, or they’re using my class time to complete work for another class. That raises the question: When were they doing my classwork? Often, the answer is that they had practice until late, or a game ran late, and they had to choose what to finish based on deadlines.”
When students find themselves stuck in the cycle of procrastination, they often look for a solution immediately, explained Pelosi. She thinks that having a habitual routine will help you slowly break out of the behavior that you’ve developed.
“A lot of people like to take the quick route of what is a quick fix that I can do to change this behavior,” Pelosi said. “A large part of that cycle is self-talk, anxiety, and higher stress levels. Self-compassion is a nice place to start working on, ‘How do I have empathy for myself?’”
Another suggestion Pelosi has is to set concrete goals on a timeline. She believes that specific goals can help with organization.
“We want to take vague generalizations and make them into something very specific, creating a concrete plan. ‘How much am I going to do by what day?’”
No one method for ending procrastination will work for everyone because each person is unique. Isabel Sosa suggests that to stop procrastinating you must set an individual plan for yourself.
“Know yourself and what you want,” Sosa said. “I’m not saying you should do every assignment the second you get home because that’s not realistic. But understand what you’re capable of accomplishing in the time you have and decide how much you want to prioritize sleep, school, grades, and other activities.”
