When people meet me for the first time, they know I’m a nerd. I just have that air. And they’re not wrong. I love learning and doing well in school, but my grades don’t tell the same story. I come from a long line of procrastinators and I might be the worst one of all. If procrastinating wasn’t in my genes and in my home, I might be on my way to great colleges, but I feel like I’ve failed at being an overachiever. Or an achiever at all, for that matter. I’m a sophomore with an average GPA of 3.68 unweighted. I set my mind to do something and then before I know it, it’s already midnight. My procrastinating problem started so early in my life that by middle school I had already accepted the fact that I’m never going to succeed in life because of this problem. Does anyone have any advice at all on how to get past this major roadblock in my academic life?
Plenty of colleges will accept you with a 3.68.
I am a master procrastinator. I will put off anything, any time, even things I actually want to do. I still managed to graduate from college on a full scholarship, get a PhD, and get a job at a household name company. Heh. You can do it. You just have to put things in place to counteract your baser instincts.
-Set higher internal deadlines for yourself. So for example, if the final external deadline is May 1, commit that you will get it done by April 25. You will miss the internal deadline, but you will probably make May 1.
-Tell someone about your commitments. If you feel any social pressure at all, this will help - the desire to avoid disappointing someone will help keep you more accountable.
-When you receive an assignment, if at all possible, start working on it as soon as you get it. I mean literally right that moment, or as close to it as you can. Inevitably, you will have to put it down and then you will forget about it or put it off for several days/weeks. But at least you’ve gotten a head start so you aren’t starting from scratch 2 days before it’s due.
-Similar to the above, if you are assigned a paper or project, start brainstorming or outlining it right away. I carry a small notebook around with me and jot down ideas. Again, at least you aren’t starting from scratch.
-One of the things that procrastinators tend to have in common is that we undervalue small chunks of time. I have a tendency to think “30 minutes - that’s not enough time to do anything, so I’ll just surf the net instead” or “1 hour! I’ll just run out of time!” Nope. 30 minutes, even 15 minutes, is plenty of time to do something. Even if “something” only means you write a messy paragraph - that’s still one paragraph closer than you were! So if you find yourself with 15-30 minutes of time, force yourself to do something, even if it’s just an imperfect paragraph. When you are doing your outlining or brainstorming, you may want to jot down examples of things you can do in 15 or 30 minute chunks of time so you are prepared when you have a couple extra minutes between classes.
-Use your smartphone! Seriously. You can get Microsoft Office (or your office suite of choice) on your smartphone and jot a few sentences or outline something really quickly while waiting in the dentist’s office.
-Often, the issue with procrastination is that the entire project seems so daunting that you dread facing it. So set small, digestible, achievable goals for yourself. For example, when I wrote my dissertation, I broke the whole thing down into 2-3 page sections. I can tell you about how many words can fit on 1 page in 12-point double-spaced Georgia font (about 283). So my daily word count goal was about 600 words. So “I’m going to write my dissertation today” sounded dreadful, but “I’m going to write two pages in this specific section tonight” sound easy to accomplish. Some days I did a little more (one day I wrote 9 pages straight!) and some days I did a little less (I’d be lucky to get a dang paragraph).
-Celebrate your accomplishments by rewarding yourself…quickly. But don’t reward yourself with anything that will get you off-track. When I was writing my dissertation, if I hit my daily page goals, I might reward myself with a little ice cream or the rest of the evening off. But I DIDN’T reward myself with Facebook time, because that was likely to take me too off-track.
-Use Leechblock or a similar browser plug-in to block your most time-wasting websites. When I was in dissertation phase I used Leechblock to limit myself to a certain number of minutes a day of my favorite sites, including College Confidential, lol. I had a Leechblock equivalent on every single browser on my computer (and they all required entering a long string of characters to override the block). You may even want to consider working on a small, internet-disabled laptop if you don’t need the Internet to do your work. There were even some nights I was so distracted that I used a reverse strategy - I ONLY whitelisted the library website! (I sometimes still have to use leechblock at work…lol.)
-One thing that really helped me focus and manage my time better was staying physically active. I know that that seems out of left field, but for some reason when I was writing my dissertation I became a machine. I got up at 6 am three days a week to run 3 miles, then came back to my desk ready to WERK. The other days I did yoga. I don’t know what was going right in my brain during those two years, but I wish it would come back.
@juillet Wow, your tips are fantastic! I really appreciate the effort you put into the reply. I agree with you about the exercising. Last year when I had sparring class, I would go there, beat up some bags until buckets of sweat poured off my body, then rush home to complete all my homework. I’ve now evolved into a lazy sophomore. Seeing other chronic procrastinators succeeding definitely gives me hope, so thank you for it! I’ve tried different apps and also the rewarding system, but your paragraph about the small chunks of time really hit home. I make excuses ALL THE TIME and I guess these could be the key to my problem.