Learn
Most students have problems with stress during their time in college and grad school. During this time, students are faced with job search, aggressive homework and project deadlines, and a host of personal and emotional problems. In these situations, one is likely to lose perspective of the problems, and an inability to prioritize results. This can manifest as motivation issues, procrastination, writer’s block etc. We don’t get the time on preserving and maintaining our mental health. And the problem is complicated by the simple fact that even when we get the time, we don’t know how to deal with problems related to mental health. This section will focus on explaining some of the mechanisms behind common mental health problems, and their potential solutions.
Explaining Procrastination
Procrastination is a common problem among children and adults. This problem is compounded in grad school, because the ability to take initiative is rewarded in grad school. Procrastination results in people just barely responding to deadlines, which often leads to a less than mediocre product at the end. Hesitating to act, will affect all aspects of life for a student, because available time is already pushed to the limit. The aim of this section is to explain what causes procrastination.
We start by defining procrastination. Procrastination can be defined as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. This plays out in a positive feedback like mechanism, which often deepens the anxiety associated with the task. This happens in 5 stages:
Stage 1: We give a task or a goal the power to determine our worth and happiness.
When we believe that getting a certain task done will make us happy and change our life, we end up giving it power over our self-worth. People who worry a lot, do this very instinctively. When a perfect performance becomes the sole measure of our self-worth. Procrastination serves as a mechanism to break this equation of self worth=performance. Fear of failure results from assuming that what we produce reflects our complete ability.
Stage 2: We use this perfectionism to literally raise the stakes in our head, so any mistakes will be tantamount to death, and any failure or rejection will be intolerable.
We demand that if we do this task, we do this task perfectly- without any criticism. We believe that our performance measures our value as a human being. This is also something that people with impostor syndrome struggle with. We believe that if we went all out and still our work wasn’t good enough, it would be a monumental failure. To protect us from this vicious attack on our self-worth, procrastination comes in. Procrastination makes us avoid doing our best work, and in this process, saves us from our harsh self-criticism.
Stage 3: We freeze with anxiety.
Our body perceives any threat to our self-worth and ego as a threat to survival. This activates our stress response, which pushes adrenaline into our system. We imagine everything going wrong, which increases the stress hormone activation in the body. If we believe that even one mistake can cause a loss of job, or failing an exam, the tension will reach high levels. Procrastination comes into play here. It acts as a temporary relief, to reduce anxiety.
Stage 4: We use procrastination to escape the anxiety.
This brings deadline closer and closer, and the pressure of a deadline creates a bigger threat than fear of failure. At this point, we feel powerful, because we balanced out all of our anxiety, and can begin to work at a relentless speed. We have escaped the self-worth = performance by causing a delay. Now, we can’t be tested on our actual ability — which would be possible if we had enough time.
Stage 5: Now, we use a real threat, like failing an exam or losing a job, to act as motivation.
While this approach is very costly, it overrides the paralysis of perfectionism and fear of failure. Now, we learn that procrastination makes sense and is rewarded. We end up learning an unhealthy behavior.
Solution
Now that we have explained how procrastination works, how do we solve it? The solution will have to provide a way of breaking this equation of self-worth = performance, and reducing anxiety. It would also have to address how we land in this spot, and grant scheduling tools so that we don’t land into the compressed deadline approach again. The problem here is that any tool that addresses scheduling misses the key equation of self-worth = performance, and hence cant guarantee adherence.
In order to reduce anxiety and break the perfectionism cycle, we need to work on the self-talk issues that cause them. In order to preface this discussion, I will call the productive person a producer. We will start by differentiating the self-talk of a procrastinator with a producer.
1. Have to do it
This statement of a procrastinator shows up as messages of victimhood, resistance and confusion. It shows up as “I have to do this task, or else”. These statements make us give up our sense of choice, and the ambivalence results in procrastination. It is a way of self-pitying ourselves, like in going to the dentist, paying taxes or facing the boss. The key belief here is that others are forcing us to do something against our will. Replacing the have-to with I choose to, will grant us the choice, that makes the ambivalence go away. It also reinforces the belief that we don’t have to do anything to be a person of value. But, if we choose to do something, we will do it to the best of our ability.
2. Should do it
Blame and guilt are related to language of shoulds. They foster a tendency to complain about the way things are, and get sadder about it. It makes us set counter-productive goals, envying others and longing for a better future. The message communicated to us is — “I’m bad. Life is bad. Nothing is the way as it should be.” It makes us focus on a current unsatisfactory state, without telling us how to get to an improved/better state. Shoulds need to be replaced with a clean choice and a plan, to get from where we are, to where we want to go. In this space, anything vague causes anxiety.
Now that I have shown how self-talk needs to be changed, we can move to scheduling methods, to make sure that we don’t land in a procrastination cycle. The name of the game is to schedule more recreation time in our schedules. This addresses a simple problem: If we inherently believe that life is a cascade of never-ending deadlines, then we don’t have control, and we certainly don’t enjoy the process. Putting in recreation time makes sure that we enjoy life, and it breaks the cycle of getting stuck meeting deadlines.
In order to make sure that we are able to have fun during the day, we need to schedule it in. In order to make this happen, I will introduce a system optimized for college students to optimize free time, learning and good grades. Here it is:
https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2007/07/20/getting-things-done-for-college-students-the-full-system/
It is my hope that this article proved useful to you. I hope that using these methods, you will be able to move towards being a producer, and reduce procrastination and anxiety.
