Full paper at http://www.lth.se/fileadmin/lth/genombrottet/konferens2012/26_Hedin.pdf Procrastination, or to against better judgment postpone a task, is a very common problem in general, and for university students in particular where about 50% procrastinate consistently and problematically. In learning contexts, procrastination leads to cramming strategies, where the major part of studying activities occurs close to the exam instead of spreading the learning over time, which generally is believed to give better learning. This paper/presentation describes a course module on procrastination and the preliminary results from running the module with about 230 students in media technology.

1. Teaching Procrastination - A Way
of Helping Students to Improve
their Study Habits
2012-08-30
• Björn Hedin
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Media Technology
• Stockholm, Sweden
• bjornh@kth.se

2. What is Procrastination
• “Defer action, especially without good reason” (Oxford
English Reference Dictionary, 1996).
• “When one delays beginning or completing an
intended course of action” (Beswick & Mann, 1994;
Ferrari, 1993a; Lay & Silverman, 1996; Milgram,
1991; Silver & Sabini, 1981)
• “To voluntarily delay an intended course of action
despite expecting to be worse off for the delay” (Steel
2007)
• Extremely common among students

3. Why we initiated a project to “teach
(about) procrastination”
• Reflection course
- Consistently and over several years seen student
reflections on their on studies where they say ”I started
to study too late this period, but next period I will start
earlier”.
- This leads to cramming strategies rather than spacing
learning more evenly over time -> reduced learning
• Own experience of similar behaviour

4. Procrastination and College Students
• 80%–95% of college students engage in
procrastination
• 75% consider themselves procrastinators
• 50% procrastinate consistently and problematically
• over 95% of procrastinators wish to reduce it
• students reporting that it typically occupies over one
third of their daily activities
• The figures above appear to be on the rise.
Various studies referenced by Steel (2007)

5. Causes and Correlates of
Procrastination
(Steel 2007)
• Task aversiveness
• Task delay – temporal discounting
• Timing of rewards and punishments
• Self-efficacy
• Impulsiveness
• Self-control
• Distractibility
• Organization
• Achievement motivation

6. Temporal Motivation Theory

7. What we have done
• In the same reflection course
- Study how widespread the use of new media is when
procrastinating.
• E-procrastination
• M-procrastination
- Make students
• Aware of the problem
• Know about its causes and effects
• Discuss anti-procrastination strategies
- Do a follow-up of the outcome

8. Structure of the Procrastination
Module
• October 2011:
- Introduction to procrastination and cramming using
relatively non-academic texts
- Write reflection documents on their own procrastination
and discuss with peers and teachers in small groups
- Questionnaires about procrastination habits related to
new media and mobile phones
- Standardized procrastination procrastination
questionnaire
- Optionally make a ”promise” about changing behaviour

9. March 2012
• First follow-up
• Read and discuss research on procrastination (Steel)
• TED video by Matt Cutts on ”Try something new for 30
days”
- And find one habit they would like to add to their lives
and one they would like to remove
• “Is Google Making us Stupid - What the Internet is
doing to our brains” by Nicholas Carr
• May 2012 – Final follow-up

10. Results from the questionnaires
• 218 of (about) 227 students answered the
questionnaires
- 40% women
- Evenly spread out over year 1, 2 and 3.
• One standardised procrastination questionnaire
• One questionnaire about procrastination and ”new
media”

11. Irrational Postponing of Actions
50%
45%
40% Very Seldom or
35% Never
30% Seldom
25%
Sometimes
20%
15%
Often
10%
5%
Very Often or
0% Always
There are aspects of my life I postpone
even though I know I shouldn't

12. Regretting not starting activities
earlier
50%
45%
40% Very Seldom or
35% Never
30% Seldom
25%
Sometimes
20%
15%
Often
10%
5%
Very Often or
0% Always
I often regret that I don't start tasks
earlier

13. Facebook on computers
35%
Very Often
30%
25% Often
20%
Now and Then
15%
Seldom
10%
5% Very Seldom or
Never
0% Don't use Facebook
When I really ought to study I on computer
instead use Facebook on a computer

14. Facebook on mobile phones
25%
Very Often
20%
Often
15%
Now and Then
10%
Seldom
5%
Very Seldom or
0% Never
When I really ought to study I Don't use Facebook
instead use Facebook on a mobile on mobile phones
phones

15. ”Other” surfing on computers
45%
40% Very Often
35%
Often
30%
25% Now and Then
20%
15% Seldom
10%
Very Seldom or
5%
Never
0% Don't surf
When I really ought to study I instead
surf on "other" on computers

16. Email on computers
40%
35% Very Often
30%
Often
25%
20% Now and Then
15% Seldom
10%
5% Very Seldom or
Never
0% Don't use Email on
When I really ought to study I instead computers
use email on a computer

17. Email on mobile phones
30%
Very Often
25%
Often
20%
15% Now and Then
10% Seldom
5% Very Seldom or
Never
0% Don't use email on
When I really ought to study I instead mobile phones
use email on mobile phones

18. SMS on mobile phones
30%
Very Often
25%
Often
20%
15% Now and Then
10% Seldom
5% Very Seldom or
Never
0% Don't use SMS on
When I really ought to study I instead mobile phones
use SMS on mobile phones

19. Summary of e-procrastination and m-
procrastination
• The three top e-procrastination activities, where
students often or very often, against better
judgement, engage in other activities on computers
- 54.6% Other surfing on computers
- 54.1% Film/TV/DVD etc on computer
- 52.3% Facebook on computers
• Top m-procrastination activities
- 50.4% SMS on mobile phones
- 28.9% Email on mobile phones
- 24.8% Facebook on mobile phones
• 88% engage in at least one e-procrastination category
often or very often, with an average of 4.7 categories.

20. Some thoughs about this
• Most activities listed was hardly a problem 10 years
ago
- Facebook, Youtube didn’t exist
- Few had computers constantly connected to Internet
- Smartphones didn’t exist
• Notification ”features” on smartphones allows students
to be distracted and start procrastinating anywhere,
anytime
• Computers are used extensively for learning, and
Facebook is but one click away

21. Follow-up at the end of the course
module
• 38% saw procrastination as a big or very big problem.
• The effect of the course module was followed up more
closely for this groups.
- About 1/3 had not changed their habits as a result of the
course module
- About 1/3 had changed their habits in some positive way,
but not to the extent they had wanted
- About 1/3 had changed their habits much in a positive
way.

22. Some comments from students
• Increased awareness of procrastination.
- They now identify when they procrastinate which makes
it easier to stop procrastinating
- But also increased stress if they don’t stop
• ”I am not alone!”
- Knowing it is a common problem made them feel better.
• Some of the anti-procrastination strategies discussed
worked well, but they soon forgot about them and fell
into old habits

23. Some anti-procrastination strategies
used/developed by students
• Organisational
- Eat the frog: Do your most unpleasant task first
- Time-boxing
- Don’t break the chain
• Technical
- Turn of notifications on their iPhones
- Start using non-distraction software such as Anti-Social,
Freedom, Self-Restraint, StayFocusd
- Make special ”parent-mode” accounts for themselves on
their computers with features turned off
- Study in places with no wi-fi
- One student sold his smart-phone and bought a dumb-
phone instead!

24. Conclusions and advice
• Many student improved their study habits!
• Skills useful not only for learning but for life gained.
As a teacher
• Frequent deadlines in courses
• Think about policies about allowing laptop/mobiles on
lectures?

25. Student responsibility and reminders