{"id":4139,"date":"2019-01-08T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4139"},"modified":"2019-01-05T15:24:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T20:24:29","slug":"wait-just-a-minute-the-benefits-of-procrastination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wait-just-a-minute-the-benefits-of-procrastination\/","title":{"rendered":"“Wait Just a Minute!”: The Benefits of Procrastination?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.”<\/p>\n

\"procrastination\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This quotation, attributed to Karen Lamb, warns us about the dangers of procrastination. Presumably our students would propose a slightly modified version:<\/p>\n

“The night before the test, I’ll wish I had started studying today.”<\/p>\n

Does procrastination ever help? Is there such a thing as “beneficial procrastination”?<\/p>\n

Types of Procrastination<\/h2>\n

I myself was intrigued when recently asked this question.<\/p>\n

(True story: I was the President-To-Be of the Procrastinators’ Society in my high school. I would surely have been elected, but we never scheduled the meeting.)<\/p>\n

Sure enough, researchers have theorized<\/a> that we procrastinate for different reasons and in different ways.<\/p>\n

Many of us, of course, procrastinate because we can’t get ourselves organized to face the task ahead.<\/p>\n

(Mark Twain assures us he never put off until tomorrow that which he could do the day after tomorrow.)<\/p>\n

Danya Corkin and colleagues wondered about another kind of deliberate<\/em> procrastination: something they call “active delay.”<\/p>\n

Active delay includes four salient features:<\/p>\n

First, students intentionally decide to postpone their work. It’s not a haphazard, subconscious process.<\/p>\n

Second, they like working under pressure.<\/p>\n

Third — unlike most procrastinators — they get the work done on time.<\/p>\n

Fourth, they feel good about the whole process.<\/p>\n

What did Corkin & Co. find when they looked for these distinct groups?<\/p>\n

The Benefits of “Active Delay”<\/h2>\n

As is often the case, they found a mixed bag of results.<\/p>\n

To their surprise, procrastinators and active delayers adopted learning strategies (rehearsal, elaboration, planning, monitoring) roughly equally.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, procrastinators generally followed unproductive motivational pathways. (If you follow Carol Dweck’s work, you know about the dangers of “performance goals” and “avoidance goals.”)<\/p>\n

And, the big headline: procrastination led to lower grades. Active delay led to higher grades<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Classroom Implications<\/h2>\n

This research gives teachers a few points to consider.<\/p>\n

First: both kinds of procrastination might look alike to us. However, they might lead to quite different results.<\/p>\n

Even if students procrastinate from our perspective, we can distinguish between two categories of procrastination. And, we should worry less about “active delay” than good, old-fashioned putting stuff off because I can’t deal with it.<\/p>\n

Second: even though “active delay” leads to more learning than “procrastination,” both probably produce less learning than well-scheduled learning.<\/p>\n

As we know from many researchers, spreading practice out over time (interleaving) yields more learning than bunching it all together.<\/p>\n

Active delay might not be as bad, but it’s still bad for learning.<\/p>\n

Finally: if you’re an “active delayer,” you might forgive yourself. As long as you’re choosing delay as a strategy — especially because you work best under pressure — then this flavor of procrastination needn’t bring on a bout of guilt.<\/p>\n

Me: I’m going to watch some football…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.” This quotation, attributed to Karen Lamb, warns us about the dangers of procrastination. Presumably our students would propose a slightly modified version: “The night before the test, I’ll wish I had started studying today.” Does procrastination ever help? Is there such a thing as “beneficial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57,96],"class_list":["post-4139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-homework","tag-study-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4139"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4146,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4139\/revisions\/4146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}