Procrastination is one of the most popularized and researched psychological phenomenons. We are reminded constantly that procrastination is the devil dressed as a unicorn and told to repeat mantras like, “beat procrastination, take action.” Having grown up in the era of distractions, I can vouch that we have all become wildly successful at it…or have we? Perhaps not. Here at Berkeley, I believe a large number of us struggle with the lesser-known and polar predicament. Pre-crastination, as social scientists define it, is the tendency to complete as much as possible at the expense of extra effort. If this sounds like a habit of yours, you may very well be a pre-crastinator. Read on for tell-tale signs!
1. You need to do things immediately or anxiety eats you up.
For some of us, we feel burdened by the amount of things we need to accomplish and they swarm in the back of our minds. Pre-crastinators end up completing tasks as soon as possible, a method of alleviating the stress and anxiety from leaving something undone. As great as this sounds, it’s like texting someone back so quickly that you’re left with an embarrassing amount of typos. Working on things for the sake of getting them done leads to a lot more easy-to-miss mistakes and often times, less quality.
2. To-do lists, down to the hour, are the bane of your existence.
Lists are meant to be gentle reminders of what we ought to do, not core dictators of our lives. You are boxing yourself if you pack your schedule and try to accomplish significantly more than you can handle. Though it seems like doing more allows for more relaxation in the future, the war with time becomes a losing battle because you counter-intuitively lose all down-time.
3. You find yourself lacking heart in most of what you do, despite finishing all tasks.
In order to truly be happy, there has to be personal value in whatever it is we choose to do. Pre-crastinating can affect our happiness because we begin to approach everything as a burden to end. To change our viewpoint, it might help to remember that as children, we spent tons of time meandering and climbing every obstacle on the playground with uncontrollable excitement. If we bring that same attitude into our lives, who knows, we just might find a little more gratification in college.