Hello, my name is Sophia and my middle name is Procrastination. Well ….. no, it’s actually not, but you get the idea. I’ve been an amazing procrastinator my entire life: I basically invented it! So you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about NOT procrastinating when it seems like I’m better at the opposite. Well, while I am an amazing procrastinator, I've had a lot of experience with its consequences and am good at combatting it.
We all know the consequences of procrastination: less sleep, less time spent on homework, less time for family, etc. We’ve always been told that procrastination is a bad thing and for the most part, yes it is, but as a fellow student (and not a parent or teacher) I can tell you that procrastination is justifiable. We’re freaking IB students! Sometimes we just want to sit on the couch and watch Netflix till we pass out from the exhaustion of all that we have to do and I’m here to tell you that that’s okay. You are completely entitled to say “I have a lot of homework to do but right now I am going to take a nap.” Not only do you want to do it, but taking a break is healthy for you. The problem comes when you take too many breaks that take up a lot more time than necessary.
So, tips and tricks to beat procrastination. I will be honest with you and say that maybe some of them will work for you, maybe all of them will work for you, and unfortunately, maybe none of them will work for you. This all depends on who you are but in my personal experience, these have been the most helpful:
Remove all electronics. Except maybe the laptop you’re working on. Put your phone away, take off your Apple Watch, silence all notifications on your laptop or tablet, do everything you possibly can to ensure that you will not be getting a text from your friends while you’re in the middle of your assignments. I can’t tell you how many times I was in the zone doing an assignment, when I got a text from a friend, answered it, decided to check Instagram, watch a quick video, and text someone else. The next thing I know, it’s 30 minutes later. TURN. IT. OFF.
Change your environment. I personally have a lot of items on my desk. I can be actively looking to put something off for later and easily achieve that by playing with one of the hundreds of little trinkets around my room. In addition, I get very antsy whenever I’m in total silence, and my room’s pretty quiet. For me, the best place to get my work done the quickest and the most efficiently is in my dining room, where there aren’t many things to distract me and I can hear the rest of my family going about their lives (not having to worry about the plagues of homework) but not in a distracting way. Maybe your room is the best place for you. Or outside. Or on the couch. Long story short, if you feel yourself getting distracted, change your environment.
Plan out your breaks. If you do your math and your chemistry and your reading and your history homework all at once, you will get burnt out. I typically like to take a 10-minute break between every subject I finish. In addition, I mentally plan ahead of time the days that I can afford to take three-hour-long naps and the days that I can’t. It sounds counterproductive to plan when to procrastinate, but if you don’t you will burn out and take longer to do each individual assignment, which in the end will take just as much time, if not more.
Watch This Video. I use half of the methods that the guy mentions here.
These are the best tricks that I use to combat procrastination. The goal isn’t to completely overcome and get rid of procrastination, but to gain the ability to control it. It is healthy and natural for you to take any sort of break that you may need but if you abuse this then you'll end up in the opposite situation where you're stressed out at one in the morning trying to finish a paper you could have done hours ago, which also isn't healthy. If you have any other tricks that work for you, email me at ssantiago628@coralreefhigh.org so that we can share our experience and help others with their own procrastination problems.
Sophia :)