How to 'Beat' Procrastination

Procrastination. The time old arch-nemesis of students. What can we do to beat (or reduce) procrastination?

To get a better understanding of what procrastination is, we'd highly recommend checking out this video where it is explained much better than we ever could.

How to Beat Procrastination (When There Are Deadlines)

Why bother about it anyways? If the work gets done at the last minute, then it's fine, right?

Wrong.

Work done in a rush at the last minute tends to be of much lower quality. While it's fine to get a lower mark sometimes on a non-graded project, a graded assignment or studying for a graded exam definitely demands a lot more than just a singular night of preparation. This can lead to missed sleep, which is absolutely terrible for numerous reasons which we will talk about in our blog about sleep.

So what can we do?

It's completely fine and normal to procrastinate, to an extent. But if the work suffers a loss in quality, then it suddenly becomes much worse than if you just did the work from a little in advance.

One of the best methods is to work your way up from 1 day before the deadline to two days, three days, four days and lengthen the time you spend on it — counting backwards — depending on the amount of work or importance of the assignment or test. The development of this skill may be similar to developing your muscles or how long you can hold your attention span for like how it is used in the Pomodoro Technique.

Swiss Cheese Tasks

If the assignment is absolutely huge, you may want to chip at it over a long period of time, and put in a larger effort in the final stretch. It allows you to achieve as much as possible, without pressure over longer time periods.

Positive Reappraisal

Reward yourself after a study session to make your brain enjoy studying. This not only improves your mental health, but also boosts your passion and determination towards a task.

It may be hard at first, but you'll get the hang of it eventually.

How to Beat Procrastination (When There Aren't Deadlines)

So you wanna make a podcast. Cough, cough, how original, cough cough. But you can't seem to muster the mental willpower to start. How do you start?

The best way is actually the motto of a big company, which we will alter in this situation to avoid copyright: "Just Do The Damned Thing Already What's Stopping You From Getting Started?"

If there are present factors that are stopping you from making your totally novel and original podcast with a unique sense of humour, then it may not be a good time to be working on an extra project — especially during important periods such as exams. But if there is nothing stopping you, you might as well just start now. If you do not have the materials or resources to start, you may wish to go and gather the resources, materials or equipment required, such as a mic — to go and start your totally new idea that a quarter of the people on the planet haven't tried to do already.

And if you're actually trying to start a podcast, don't give up just because a random group of people online made fun of the stereotype. Try, and you have a chance of succeeding.

We hope this post will help you with beating procrastination and staying on top of your deadlines.