Procrastination is something that we all do in one form or another. Personally, I am currently procrastinating on my blog assignment, college apps, and an English essay. While procrastination may seem to be counterproductive on the surface, its benefits can be uncovered through analysis from the perspective of economics.
Many people derive utility from the act of procrastinating, even if they do not realize it. The decision to procrastinate comes down to opportunity cost. For example, the opportunity cost of spending time on homework now is the time that could be spent watching Netflix or playing games. Obviously the work must be done at some point in the future, however the instant gratification of wasting time now often outweighs the stress induced by putting work off.
People often justify procrastination through statements such as "I'll be more focused later" or "I just need a quick break." It may seem that these are just weak attempts at rationalizing time-wasting activities, however they are not without some truth. Deadlines have been shown to greatly improve productivity, and procrastination may actually reduce total time wasted. If one spends 3 hours at maximum focus working up to the deadline on an essay after procrastinating on it, they will have wasted less time than if they spent 5 hours working interspersed with distractions.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2008/05/how-economists-think-about-procrastination.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/30/procrastination.economics/
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I think this brings up the concept of allocated time versus required time. For example, if one knows that they are able to finish a project in one hour but they allocate three hours, they will spread out one hour's worth of material along three hours. This leads to greatly decreased productivity. In contrast, an alternate view on procrastination is that it enables one to reach their highest capacity of efficiency. For example, if you have one hour to finish a research paper and you would still like to get a decent grade, you will work at your optimal level of efficiency to achieve that goal.
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