Procrastination Problems

During Monday’s class, we learned about chronemics, which is one form of nonverbal communication. For those of you not familiar with Greek, the prefix chrono means time. Therefore, chronemics is the study of how time plays a role in communication. Crazy to think about, right? We can “use” time, and in doing so, convey messages of power, respect, laziness, etc.- whether intentionally or not.

In this post, I’m going to discuss one aspect of chronemics, which is time orientation. There are four

different orientations: past, timeline, present, and future. Basically, a person’s orientation can generally explain how they view and use time.

My professor had my class think about what time orientation each of us fits into, and I came to the conclusion that I’m a future-oriented person. I drew that conclusion because I really like to set goals- short-term and long-term. I like to keep a daily/weekly/monthly list of things that I need to get done. It helps me feel more organized and know what I have coming up. Here’s the thing though- I get all of my stuff done… but eventually. Yes, that’s right, I am a procrastinator. You would think I would’ve learned by now that waiting until the last minute for everything, especially school work, does no good, but that’s not the case. Here, let Leslie Knope show you what I'm usually thinking when I realized that I've procrastinated yet again:

If you don’t have procrastination habits like me, and want to get a sense of what it’s like (and get a good laugh), click here to check out a great TED Talk video on procrastination by Tim Urban. (Or if you're reading this and you do procrastinate and want to further that procrastination by watching a funny video, check it out too. Not that I'm encouraging procrastination...)

Anyway, so why am I talking about my bad habits? Well, a thought popped into my head while we were going over future orientation, in class. I thought: How does, if at all, a person’s time orientation affect their procrastination tendencies? Does a future-oriented person procrastinate more because they think work can be done in the future? Or, the opposite- a future-oriented person wants to keep moving towards the future and can delay gratification, so they get work done now?

Well, I decided to look it up. A study done last year concluded that future-oriented individuals, “tend to have stronger self-control, decreasing their risk of procrastination.” So, I guess that doesn’t really hold up in my situation then. Maybe I'm just a person who likes making lists of goals, and I know I'll get around to them eventually. I mean, the important thing is that I do get it all done. Just at the last minute.

Whatever I am, future-oriented or not, what I do know is that it's getting late and I have to get this blog post posted, so I'm going to do that. See you next week!