October 13, 2011
How to Help Law Students Overcome Procrastination and Faulty Thinking
By Dr. JoAnne Sweeny
In English, the verb “procrastinate” comes from Latin, as many big English words do. It combines the adverb “pro,” which implies a forward motion with the word “crastinus,” which means belonging to tomorrow. As noted by Ann Enquist in her article Defeating the Writer’s Archenemy, researchers have indicated that between 65 and 90 percent of college-level students procrastinate to the extent that it has negative effects on their academic performance.
Procrastination in the legal world is particularly problematic because so much of practicing law is following deadlines. Whether it’s a memo for a partner or an important court filing, a document that is even one minute late can cost you. At the very least, procrastination can annoy your client and foster a bad relationship with opposing counsel. According to ABA Comments to Model Rule 1.3 on Diligence, “no professional shortcoming is more widely resented than procrastination.”
Of course, if your students are procrastinators, this information is hardly helpful. What may be more helpful for law professors is to help their students figure out why they procrastinate to see if there is something they can do about it. Even an entire class spent on helping students overcome their procrastination is time well-spent.
According to the authors of The Mind Gym: Give Me Time, procrastination isn’t about personality, it’s about thinking. Someone who declares “I am a procrastinator” makes his or her behavior appear to be a personality trait that is as invariable as his or her height or which hand he or she writes with. In fact, procrastination is a habit that is caused by faulty thinking or beliefs. Once your students know what their faulty thinking is, they can attack those thoughts and improve their habits.
There are several different kinds of beliefs that can cause procrastination. Try to help your students see which category or categories they fall into:
1. Perfection
Perfectionists believe that everything they do must be exactly right. That can lead to being unable to finish a project. Because the project isn’t “perfect,” and probably never can be, it will never be finished.
Read more
