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Procrastination
So I have always had massive issues with procrastination, but never as bad as it has been in the past few months. I have also always gotten away with it, because I procrastinated until I had exactly as much time as I needed to get my stuff done quickly and still do well on it.
That's about to change. I was assigned an essay in September, due tomorrow. I left it until this weekend, thinking I would spend all day Saturday on it. WRONG! I woke up feeling shitty from lack of sleep and didn't get anything done all day, and proceeded to procrastinate sleeping so that I was exhausted Sunday as well and didn't get anything done...but still didn't sleep as much as I should have
Now its almost 2:30 am and I still have 4 pages of this essay to write and a project due tomorrow, and I am so tired I can't stop shaking and I don't think I will be able to finish all of this on time.
So now that I have realized how big of a problem I have, I need to find a way to fix this problem. This is where I need help! Anybody? Somebody? I have no idea how to deal with my procrastination, because it has definitely gotten worse and I can't afford any more nights like this because there is no way I am doing well on this essay.
Don't tell me to just do it. It doesn't work. I try. I promise I try. I just get so distracted because I hate writing essays and then all of a sudden its 2 am and I still have to do the whole thing...
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I had the same problem in school/university. I never totally got over it, and I did my share of staying awake for 48 hours straight to finish a huge project, but here are a few tricks that helped me at times:
- For me at least, my procrastination was driven to some extent by perfectionism. To address this, try not to care *too* much about quality. 75% of school success is just completing assigned tasks on time. It's usually better to turn in something sub-standard on time than to get in the habit of turning everything in late.
- Electronic devices are inherently distracting. Try to do as much work on the project as possible on pen and paper, with all electronic devices in another room. Translate from paper to a word processor at the end. Rather than using online sources, try to use more paper sources from the library: they're usually better anyway.
- Try to break the project into smaller tasks. For example, when doing a research-based essay, first go to the library and get some source materials, then take bullet-point notes from the sources, then write a draft on paper, and finally transfer this to a word processor. Try to do these separated tasks on different days.
- Make up deadlines for milestones, and try to mind-game yourself into thinking that these deadlines are actually hard deadlines. For example, you could say that you need to finish researching by Dec 1, do 2 pages by Dec 5, finish it by Dec 10. Only do a few deadlines: trying to schedule every single day never works.
- Contemplate how easy it'd be to do just a *little* work on the project. For example, you could say to yourself, "I'll just add one more sentence." Oftentimes, after you do this small amount of work, you'll feel like doing some more. And if you still can't bring yourself to continue working, at least you made *some* progress.
- When you're getting worryingly close to a deadline (a real one or one of your made-up ones), figure out what you're doing when you should be working, and ban yourself from doing those things *at all* until the necessary work is done. Say to yourself, "I don't have to work on the project, but if I don't then I'm just going to sit here and stare at the wall, because I'm not going to do TIME_WASTING_ACTIVITY."
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