One of my students recently asked me whether procrastination was good or bad. Being a writer, it wasn’t difficult to explain.
First of all, what is procrastination? Simply defined, it is putting things off because we either do not want to do them, or because we have too many things to do. Don’t be afraid when you hear of procrastination being described as a “disorder” or a “psychological dysfunction”, because when writers procrastinate (anyone can procrastinate, not just writers), it’s nothing serious. You are simply putting off your writing assignments for later.
Why are you doing this? Well, the reasons may be many. Like we said above, you either do not want to do them (for reasons like – you are afraid of not doing them well, you do not like the assignments, you do not have the right environment, you think you work better under pressure, you have writer’s block, or you’re simply too lazy); or you have too many things to do and prefer to get the other things done before you sit down to write. We’ll discuss how to cure procrastination in a later post. Let’s just talk about whether it’s good or bad.
Well, it can be either good or bad depending on the situation and how you look at it.
It can be good if
- It is due to lack of ideas and procrastinating gives you time to get over your block.
- Doing something interesting first gives you inspiration for writing.
- You are under stress or going through a bad phase, so putting the writing off for when you’re feeling better will produce better results.
It is bad when
- Putting off your writing assignments for the last moment produces bad results.
- You do not have time to review or proofread, thus ending up with error-filled writing.
- You are not able to meet your deadlines.
- Not meeting your deadlines results in bad reputation.
So, what do you think? Is procrastination good or bad? Why?