Tuesday Tidbit: How to Pass Procrastination Station!
written by Kate H.
Cramming for a test tomorrow? School’s just started and you’re already behind? I’m here to help! We have all been there. Whether you consciously make the decision to or not, we tend to push things off that we simply don’t want to do, secretly hoping that they will disappear. While that may work for very few things, schoolwork is not one of them. So why not just do it and not worry about it? The decision is up to us and too often we make the wrong choice.
By waiting until the last minute, you risk the quality of your work or your studying. When you are rushed, you skip over detail and precision, ultimately costing you your grade. You ask yourself, Why do I keep doing this? How can I stop?. You tell yourself, “I wont do this next time,” fully believing that’s true. And then the cycle repeats. Here are some tips for pushing past procrastination!
3 Basics:
These are tips I’m sure you have heard before but cannot be stressed enough! They will help you immensely as you begin your school year!
1) Use a planner! For me, simply writing stuff down helps me collect my thoughts and calm down. When I can see what I have to do physically written out, it creates a sense of organization and helps me focus on my goals.
How you write it down is all up to you. My favorite way is creating one simple list of everything I have to do. For many people, though, that may be very overwhelming. So, break it down. Make a school list, a home list, and a future list. Still feel out of control? Make a list for each of your classes and so on. A completely different way to organize yourself is to print out a calendar. This works well too! Visualizing your schedule day by day will help you determine what you must accomplish first.
Make sure you update the list or calendar as soon as you are assigned something or as soon as you think of something you want or need to do. Include dates and deadlines. Even if you know that you do not have time today to study for a test next week, write it down! Simply looking at “test next Wednesday” will ensure you won’t forget!
2) Work on projects and studying in small pieces. Many times, I have used an extra 5 minutes while waiting for a ride to brainstorm ideas for an essay that I knew I wouldn’t have time to completely write in that moment. Then, when I sat down to write the essay a couple days later, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had already started. It will be like a mini gift to yourself!
You also must know your schedule. If you know you have a long practice or rehearsal tomorrow, work ahead today, even if it is just reading 5 pages of your reading assignment! That’s 5 less pages you will have to read the next day. This will ensure that you can focus while participating in your extra-curriculars and not worry about all of your work piling up!
3) Finished? Cross it out! That feeling of satisfaction is the absolute best, and you deserve the excitement of scratching a pencil through your completed task. Some people may just like to draw a simple line through it to keep their list organized, but that’s all personal preference.
2 Not-so-basics:
These are the tips that I have found helpful for me. You may have not thought of them before, but I challenge you to try them out and see if they work for you!
1) Choose a specific day or days to organize yourself. For me, I picked two. I decided that on Sunday nights I would sit down for a maximum of 15 minutes and look at my week ahead. I would reset my planner by turning to a new page, rewriting everything that remained on my “to-do” list. I would look at the upcoming test and projects that I already knew about and see if I could find small bits of time to slowly chip away at them.
My second time was Friday afternoon. You know the “ahhh” feeling as you come home from school on Friday after you completed a week of school? I chose to take this time to look at all that I accomplished that week and pat myself on the back. By doing this you are rewarding yourself for your planning and hard work and are more likely to continue being organized. On Fridays, I would also look at what I could do on the weekend to help set myself up for the next week.
2) Study by yourself sometimes. Collaboration is great, and many studies show it is a very positive and effective way to study! However, studying with friends over coffee at Starbucks can sometimes promote your procrastination. Your are much more likely to get off topic and even just complain about the work rather than doing it.
This tip is very personal. You need to know yourself and what methods of studying work for you. You must also know your friends. I have some great friends that I LOVE to hangout with; however, I know I cannot study with them because I know we will not be productive. On the other hand, I have many friends who I know I CAN study with and we will stay on topic and even help each other get better grades.
1 Final Tip:
Stay calm. Too often we become overwhelmed when we receive a lot of homework or many tests in one week. By remaining in control of your emotions, you are much more likely to use your time wisely and finish your assignments thoroughly, on time, and even have time to begin your next assignment. Not only does worrying not feel good, it takes time. For the 10 minutes you spend dreading your work, that was ten minutes you could have been working on it! This is much easier said than done, and I must take this advice as well. School doesn’t have to be constant, last-minute rushing to finish things. You CAN stay ahead of and on top of your assignments! Believe in yourself!