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didn't buy things that they couldn't pay for they wouldn't have to pay interest rates. Now there are some cases where credit is important and quite practical. Buying a house and a car can be daunting tasks without the aid of credit. These people are not the procrastinators I speak of. The people that I'm referring to are the people that decide to get a credit card for purchasing trivial things like clothes and fast food that they don't have the money for yet.

In every aspect, procrastination comes down to the lack of the ability to delay gratification. The student would rather not think about doing that paper right now. The idea of doing the paper feels so intimidating and horrible that the student would go to great lengths to not have to think about it for just a short time longer. The bill payer may put off paying his bill out of laziness. The credit card purchaser doesn't worry about how they are going to pay off their bills and just buys now. It is this idea of putting things off for later that is so addictive and Omni-apparent throughout all forms of procrastination.

There is some sort of cognitive error in the way people think when procrastinating. They think that the future version of themselves will not have to worry about this or that something will happen that will save them from their dreaded event.

What could our society accomplish if we found a cure to procrastination? Well, all the time spent procrastinating could be split in to productive study or paper writing as well as non-stressful more enjoyed free time. People's stress levels would be lower. People would have more time to do their academic achievements and they would have more stress-free free time. Free time when you are procrastinating is not as enjoyable as free time without procrastinating. There is always that little pot on the back stove in the back of your mind telling you that you shouldn't be doing this and you should be working on your homework instead. Without procrastination there would be much less people having to pay interest rates and fees for late payments. Those people would either have more money or more time depending on if they worked the same amount or if they decided to trade in their savings for more free time.

Why do we not think of procrastination as something curable? Is it because it is a decision people make and not classified as a disorder. I looked up some psychology articles on procrastination and most of them were analyzing and commenting on its prevalence throughout academics but very few were actually looking for a way to reduce or treat it. There are other personality traits we label disorders, but why not procrastination. Maybe in the next version of the American Psychological Association manual it will be a disorder.

Learn more about this author, Alex Bond.
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