Procrastination/Time Management

Procrastination

It can be incredibly difficult not to put assignments off until later, but for many "later" doesn't exist. "Later" is filled with social events, club meeting, Greek life functions, sports, family responsibilities, and other course work . However, even though we know that is the case it is much easy to rely on the concept of later. 

The best procrastination tip I have is to demystify your laters. The importance of demystifying your later is that it gives you an honest look at whether you will have time to complete this assignment or not in the future. Demystifying your later is simple! All you need to do is pull out your schedule and be honest about available times. If you have a three hour practice and you plan to finish an important assignment after, you are probably not setting yourself up for success. Consider instead doing the majority of the assignment now while you have time and then polishing and turning in the assignment after your practice. This is an easy compromise and it keeps the assignment out of mystery later's hands where the likelihood of completion goes down tremendously. 

This method also helps you decide when to make a compromise on work. Sometimes when we simply barrel ahead we still are not setting ourselves up for success. Sometimes there really might be a better time to complete an assignment, especially if your not feeling well or feel overworked. Breaks are not the enemy as you see below we just need to use them effectively. The important part to later is that it needs planned. Good rule of thumb is when you want to pack up and complete an assignment "later" plan the time at which you are going to complete the assignment this will give you insight to whether that plan is even possible and can help to make sure you stay on top of things. 

The other thing to consider with procrastination is that things will always come up. If you have time set aside get coursework done or study, you should use it because when you get invited to a last minute thing you don't need to decide whether you want to complete economics homework or go out.

This is a helpful tool for students who feel like they should be using their study time more effectively. You might feel like you get a lot of the stuff done but you are never working on your important assignments until the last minute. Priority lists are great because it can help you to decide what absolutely needs done today. It can also help you to start to make progress on bigger assignments you may be putting off if you can see that you listed them as more important than a discussion post.

Prioritization can also help you to balance multiple projects. It can be hard to leave stuff unfinished but sometimes it is better to work on something incrementally rather than all at once. 

If you notice either good habits that you want to instill like, completing pre-reading for class or drinking more water, or bad habits you want to kick to the curb like, missing class or excessive screen time. 

The first step is to track the habit. Find a way to mark when you do a good habit or bad habit. This will help to be more aware of where your at with a habit. Often with bad habits we know its bad but we can create excuses to make up for it. For good habits it allows us to see the change we are making which can be used as motivation. 

Another motivation can be incentives. Reward yourself in small milestones as you work up to where you want to be. You can also use a reward system for minimizing bad habits each time you decide to avoid a bad habit it can put you a step closer to a weekly reward.