By: Cassandra Hendry
Tim Pychyl’s office looks like any other professor’s at Carleton: stacks of paper on the desk, research books scattered throughout, a laptop perched in the middle of all of it. Nothing is out of the ordinary, except for three multi-coloured juggling balls.
Pychyl picks them up and begins to juggle, all the while keeping up a steady conversation.
“It’s not procrastination,” he swears.
It’s not an empty promise; procrastination is a topic Pychyl knows all about. As a professor of psychology, he specializes in the fascinating and sometimes dangerous world of procrastination and how it affects well-being.
“I’ve been trying to understand why we become our own worst enemy,” he says. “I think the biggest problem on campus for students is procrastination.”
Naturally, his area of expertise translates well to his classroom work with both undergraduate and graduate students, both of whom he says have equally serious problems with leaving assignments or readings to the last minute.
Pychyl says these problems for students stem from seeing course work as a huge, insurmountable challenge that they have no idea how to begin. The basis of this problem is uncertainty, he explains.
Using very clear-cut expectations, structured tasks, and the Internet—a student’s best friend—Pychyl breaks down the seemingly impossible assignments into smaller, easier parts.
“I try not to just say there’s a paper due at the end of the term. We build to it. I scaffold their performance on the larger task by having a whole bunch of other tasks that build,” he says. “Success breeds confidence.”
One of his go-to methods for first-year students is the dissection of journal articles. First, he teaches his students how to find and read a scholarly article, then how to summarize it, and finally how to critique it. This way, students feel a sense of accomplishment while learning the basics they need for later assignments.
“We have to keep tasks manageable but meaningful. It’s a dance,” says Pychyl.
Another one of his ways to cure procrastination is through prompt feedback. A self-proclaimed web fanatic, Pychyl always replies back to students right away to give immediate answers and keep the material “fresh in their minds.”
In an environment like university where procrastination can sometimes run rampant, Pychyl is doing his best to combat it. Armed with his research on the topic and a host of skills crafted just for helping students, he’s doing exactly what he knows best: teaching.