Despite all the warnings students receive from teachers, parents, maybe even your own conscience, teenagers can't seem to help but procrastinate working on important assignments or big projects, be it for school or an extracurricular activity. According to Dr. Maggie Wray, there are 12 different types of procrastinators and several simple methods to overcome such habits (Article).
I personally disagree with some of her recommended tactics for parents dealing with frustrating teens, because though she may have a PH.D. and specialize in parent-child psychology consolations, Dr. Wray only provides the usual, generic suggestions. She recommends verbal encouragement and a clear working space, no distractions, expressing an interest, etc. Perhaps its because of modern technology or the fact that that I have a sibling, that despite following such strategies, I still seem to procrastinate at times.
One of the main problems I have noticed--based off of personal experience and that of family/friends--is that most assignments of this modern day and age require the use of a computer or internet access. Googling a document can lead to distractions and before you know it, what was once a window opened up to a scientific article may now be a youtube video of cats rolling in the snow, or a dumb website of cheesy pick-up lines.
Of course, use of the internet provides a wonderful, limitless learning device to be thankful for. However, projects that do not require typing or online studies could actually ensure higher productivity, in comparison to what teachers consider to be simple research tasks, which may do more harm than good regarding homework vs. distractions.
I think that Dr. Wray's techniques to prevent procrastination is limited to only some students in school because evey student is different, which means different studying techniques and therefore different strategies to focus. What us students need to do is find a method to keep procrastination at a limit. But the problem is, when we do realize the reality of needing to come up with a strategy, we're too busy with all the homework that was assigned to us 2 weeks ago and due the next day. Haha.
ReplyDelete