Procrastination and How to Avoid It
As you’re reading this, you’re probably procrastinating on something. You’re feeling that nervous rumble in your stomach and you’re ignoring it anyway.
We all procrastinate. Some of us don’t do it as much but we all do it. As long as we have a deadline, we procrastinators are going to get the work done, but along with it not being good quality, it’ll bring us stress and anxiety. Let’s suppose we get a project we have to get done in a week, we are not going to spend all seven days equally doing it. We’ll spend the sixth day wallowing in fear and self-pity (and doing nothing) and the seventh day working like a maniac.
And then we’ll get a bunch of compliments on the good work. Except that’s not what’ll happen. It’s a sprint vs. a marathon. Hopefully these tips can help you a bit.
Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower
We can procrastinate because we find the work overwhelming in one way or the other. So step one should be breaking it up so you can do it. Here’s how:
To-do lists and Bullet journals.
When you actually write stuff down, it gives them a tangible, solid form. Set reminders on your phone so it is harder to ignore your work.
Make a todo list on Todoist : iOS | Android | Website
Personally I like making to-do lists in notebooks. Make sure you prioritise your list in order to make it effective. You can colour-code, use stickers or do whatever fit for you.
Set short-term and long-term goals.
Bullet Journals: A nice way to stimulate your creativity. Doesn’t have to be fancy. All you artsy people out there can take advantage and have fun too.
Masterpost by @areistotle
Break down daunting tasks into topics. Just like you’d prefer reading a text which has paragraphs in it to a huge wall of text, breaking tasks into bits will show you that the task is way easier than you think it is. So if you have to write a 40 page paper for Biology in a month, here’s how you’d break it.
Research. You can break that further into Library research and computer research.
Organising your material.
Writing pages 1-5 on day #5 and so on.
This makes your task seem way easier. Just make sure you stick to your targets. Think about what you’ll get if you do this perfectly.
Use the The Pomodoro technique developed by Francesco Cirillo.
Why you could be putting off your work right now:
You’re waiting for the magic situation to appear.
You think you work best under pressure.
You’re doing thing that aren’t important but more fun or easier.
You don’t feel like doing it.
Make a deal with yourself. I’ll do my English assignment. And then I can order a pizza and chill.
Now is the best time. Your work will be better if you know what you’re doing. The fun way is not the good way. And who’s going to eat that pizza if you don’t feel like doing your work?
Here are some tips I posted in my other post but I’ll post them here too because they might help:
Take action immediately. This is the habit that sets highly productive people apart.
Do the task that you’re more likely to procrastinate on first . And that way you’ll know that it was the worst thing you had to do for the day.
Noisy house? Go to the library or request your family to give you some quiet. Close your door. This may seem obvious but it is important to do this.
Forest: iOS | Android | Windows |
My Study Life: iOS | Android | Windows
Disable the automatic notifications
Shift your bookmarks somewhere else.
Would you really check facebook over Gaining a bad reputation or not accomplishing your dreams? Probably not.
Create a detailed timeline with short-term and long-term goals. One deadline and you’re bound to procrastinate.
Write it down. I will finish my Economics homework by 8 P.M today. I will finish this section of the Chemistry book by tomorrow. If you don’t do your Econ by 8, you won’t be able to catch on the Chemistry. This will create a sort of urgency to act.
Tell others about your goal.
You want to be accountable. You don’t want to endanger your reputation by failing to do your work.
Making your goal public will help in doing that. You’ll want to ensure a certain quality and you’ll definitely not want to fail. Tumblr is an amazing platform for doing just that.
So that’s all for this post. Hope it helps you guys. I’m still working on how to stop procrastinating myself but these are the tips that usually seem to help most people. Sorry if I made typos. It’s super late.