Procrastination is one of the greatest problems a student can have and we need to fix it. Procrastinating is leaving things to the last minute. There are many benefits to doing things with time, such as reduced stress, a sense of accomplishment, less sloppy work, and more free time even though it doesn’t feel like it. Procrastination leads mainly to stress, anxiety, and mistakes because you need to rush things. One impact that procrastination has on you is the I’ll do it tomorrow loop which is when you tell yourself that you will do a task the next day and when the next day arrives you say the same thing to yourself and it is a constant cycle until you are forced to do the task because of reasons like a due date.
The most important tip for stopping procrastination is to break the cycle by telling yourself, I WILL do it today. This is much easier said than done as we all want free time after a tiring day at school. it takes a strong mentality to break the cycle. There are two main ways to start this process. The first and more extreme version has you doing as much work as you can on the first day it is assigned and when you are tired you stop then you can finish the rest of the assignment whenever you are free. This method is harder than the other method because knowing when you are tired mentally is really hard as your mind can trick you so you can have more free time. The second and more well-known method is to divide your assignments into days to do small parts of the assignment every day or even every other day. This method takes discipline and consistency because one mess up can lead you back into the cycle. The benefit of this method is that you get your work done every day for a little while so the topic is always fresh on your mind
A great tip for stopping procrastination is to make an agenda/schedule. If you visualize how you want to divide your time in your head, it can be very easy to forget, but having an agenda or schedule and checking it every day can eliminate this problem. One of, if not, the most important tip is to get rid of distractions. Any sort of distraction can make you stop working on your assignments so getting rid of these is a great way to focus on your task. Finally, a tip that is underrated is to reward yourself. Our brains are really biased to do things if we get something in return. A great thought you can have before working on something could be something like “if I read until page 173 today after I will eat my favorite snack and watch my favorite show.”
