Have you ever put off work and then not managed to complete it? do you happen to make excuses instead of spending time actually working on the task?
There are multiple ways people work. Not only in their occupation but also in their social and personal life the way people behave and work varies from person to person. There are multiple people who live life in the moment and deal with things head-on. However, there are also others who are unable to do so and tend to put things off till they have no other option but to deal with it. Although this kind of behavior can be observed in all kinds of backgrounds regardless of age, gender and culture it is also extremely prevalent among students.
Procrastinating is normal and everyone tends to procrastinate at some point or another. In a world like ours where there is always a hundred things to do. We tend to procrastinate a lot as we end up doing things according to a certain hierarchy of priorities. Procrastination can lead to extreme levels of stress and fatigue for individuals at times. However, they are able to complete their task.
There are people who procrastinate but still get their work done. it’s okay but there are also people who tend to self-sabotage themselves by procrastinating to a point so high that they are unable to complete their work which adds to their worries. Maladaptive procrastination can be very self-sabotaging and is often known as self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is when people tend to take part in certain activities that handicap their performance.
There are people who often tend to procrastinate things until the last minute because they feel that they work better under pressure and although this may be true for some. There are also multiple people who actually don’t work better under pressure but feel that they do as they don’t normally work in other times. Because the only time they work is when they are under extreme pressure, they assume that they work better under pressure. These people also tend to spend a lot of time worrying about their tasks and about the consequences that will follow if they fail to do so, however, they do not actively work on the task.
There are also times when they spend hours thinking of possible excuses in order to explain why they did a bad job instead of actually doing their tasks. These people who engage in self-handicapping also tend to often do other things instead of doing their work so that they can blame it on that if they do a bad job.
To understand it better we can look at this example- Susan spends time watching television and engaging in other activities instead of studying for her statistics test. She worries about how her test will go but doesn’t refrain from watching television and hanging out with her friends. Finally, after a while she ends up studying for a few hours and then she gives the test.
Now, since she did not spend multiple hours studying and was engaged in other activities but she also did study for a few hours, there are two ways how she may interpret her scores. If she gets bad scores she can blame it on her lack of time spent in studying while if she somehow managed to get good grades, she will assume that she can do it even if she hardly works. This will create a vicious cycle wherein the person may assume that they work better under pressure and when they don’t spend multiple hours.
Self-handicapping thus refers to creating barriers to successful performance prior to an achievement task. basically, people handicap their own performance on a task so that they have a ready excuse for failure. In this way, self-handicapping not only reduces the cost of failure by shifting blame away from individuals but also enhances the value of success as success ended up occurring despite the handicap.
There are often times when we tend to procrastinate however there are people who are unable to complete their work and may end up self-sabotaging. maladaptive procrastinators often tend to partake in activities that will act as a barrier to their performance. Deutlich tend to think of different excuses instead of getting the work done and may believe they work better under pressure.
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