It is finals week, and that for many of us meant pulling the dreaded all-nighters because those semester-long projects were put off until the day before it was due.  Those times you procrastinated are finally coming back to bite you in the ass.

As college students, we already have years of experience putting homework aside to do something more enjoyable.  Procrastination have become second-nature to most students; we would choose to go to a party over studying for the upcoming exam in a heartbeat.

Yes, we all know procrastination is bad, and yes, it makes homework more stressful, but we have all but given up on a solution. But instead of accepting defeat, there is a a special type of procrastination called “structured procrastination” that can be beneficial to getting some important work done.

First, let’s delve in our strange little minds for a second to figure out why the phenomenon of procrastination is so commonplace.  It is like this: our brains are wired to value and like the things that rewards us through releasing a feel good chemical called dopamine, and it avoids the ones that cause pain or negative emotions.  Therefore, it is within our DNA to want to watch some TV first before cracking open the textbooks.  

Psychology studies have found that we value a task depending on its perceived reward and how much later the reward will occur.  The more immediate the reward, the higher we rank the task. This is referred to as the Present Bias.

The Present Bias explains the reason behind why we play videos games and check our cellphones every 10 minutes.  The instant reward we feel from doing these activities can become addicting.  Because we focus so much on feeling good now, it is easy to dismiss future, ore important rewards such as getting an A on your big project.

However, someone can procrastinate without being a procrastinator.  Theses two kinds of people are very different. The difference is that the former is occasional and the latter is habitual and far more harmful.  A  procrastinator typically also have a low amount of self-discipline for immediate rewards.

John Perry believes that the way to fight procrastination is to use its bad qualities and make it a strength, but it involves some level of self-deception, something the procrastinators do not lack.  He named this method “structured procrastination,” something he discovered in 1995 while he was grading papers.  

Perry found that people who procrastinate rarely sit around and do nothing; instead, they are busy doing anything but the task at hand.  Therefore, by making a to-do list and putting the “most important” task on top, a procrastinator will be driven to accomplish all the other tasks below that one most important task.

Perry recommends picking that one important task carefully enough to make it believable. “The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list,” he wrote on his website. “The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don’t). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren’t). Luckily, life abounds with such tasks. In universities the vast majority of tasks fall into this category, and I’m sure the same is true for most other large institutions.”

This is perhaps a rare instance where self-deception becomes a good thing. By thinking you are procrastinating by not doing the actual work on the top of the list, you felt inclined to do all the other tasks below just so you do not have to get it. 

Jasmine Liu, a sophomore in Culinary Science, said she tends to procrastinate the little tasks she knows she can finish.  “I tend to tackle the big projects first but ignore the small assignments until later because of how easy they are to accomplish,” Liu said.  “I know I can get them done at a certain time, so I just put it off.”  Those easy assignments in a way becomes a drive for Liu to do the harder ones.

Liu recommends that students also use planners and write in not only the deadlines for assignments, but when she would actually do it. “Having a system you can refer to helps a lot to keep you on track.”

Other solutions include using the Pomodoro Technique, where you work for 25 minutes then reward yourself by taking a break for 5 minutes.  This form of immediate reward can boot our natural inclination to avoid hard work and assignments. 

Remember that procrastination is a symptom, not a cause.  By understanding that we procrastinate because of our instinct to avoid pain and gain immediate reward, we get a glimpse into the vicious cycle that many students tried to break out of but could not.  Procrastination can become productive if it is structured and done on purpose.

With the right amount of self-deception, one can turn procrastination on its head and turn it into tools for productivity.