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Procrastination
Guys I swear I didn't spend 2 weeks procrastinating on writing this! I just had mid sems on lmao.
You know if studying was a video game, your grades (or passing) would be your objective, stress would be your motivator whilst procrastination would be your main obstacle. Everyone has experienced it to some degree. I'm sure you've even heard of those articles that will 'cure' procrastination or at least give you tips on how to deal with it. Now what I wanna do today is really look at what procrastination is, why we experience it, how it's driven and finally, how to actually beat it. There's actually more to procrastination than you might think and digging deeper into it can tell us a lot about human nature and how to optimise our performance.
Procrastination is basically postponing something for 'later'. There's several reasons why we could do this. From my experience, here's when I'm likely to procrastinate:
- Task is too difficult
- Task is too complex
- Task is too boring/easy
- Poor time management/planning
- Distractions
Making 'better' tasks
Before studying for anything, you should always have a goal. After all, if you don't know what you're doing, how are you supposed to do it? I'd highly recommend making a to-do list (in advance). Anyways,
If a task appears too difficult, complex or even boring we're not inclined to do it. After all, our brain wants to avoid unpleasant sensations hence if studying is associated with it, you'll feel a natural tendency to avoid it. However, what our brain doesn't understand is that our perceptions and reality can be warped. Just from a subconscious level, we can inflate tasks to be more cumbersome than they really are to the point where even thinking about it becomes gives us a headache. Hence we resort to procrastination. To clear the fog you gotta grab the bull by its horns and once you sink your teeth into it. Once you do, all that mental resistance (ie stress/anxiety towards that task) you've built up fades away (in other words, you're in the flow state). Therefore, the likely problems here are that you've made the task more unpleasant than it really is (difficulty), you don't know where to start (complexity) or you're not engaged enough (boring/easy).
Managing these is the same. Get a task and break it down to simple, specific, and actionable steps. For example, instead of 'study X subject' split it up into its components 'reviewing notes/doing practice questions/flashcards/etc'. This doesn't have to take long! Just add these 'sub-categories' underneath your main tasks. What's even better is that now you have a sense of progression, as you can cross off tasks once you complete them. This is important for keeping you engaged in the overall process and pushing you to complete the next one. Not only that, but having a plan provides you a sense of reassurance and confidence towards your studies (which is pretty important for your long term motivation, more on this later).
*Bonus tip: As a rule of thumb, focus on tasks, not time. Rather than aiming to study for X hours a day, be oriented towards results (ie your to-do list) and your time will be secondary to how much work you get done. This is important as you can free valuable time for other activities.*
What about motivation? Don't worry about it for now. Most times you'll find that it comes after you start working. Now if you're actually struggling with burnout in general, that's a topic for another day.
Time management
Consider the following statement:
This right here is Parkinson's Law and helps you prevent setting unreasonable deadlines. Deadlines are pretty important. I'm sure you've noticed how your productivity spikes up during those last few hours before an assignment's due. Basically, if you give yourself a whole day to complete a task, chances are it'll take you all day to do it. My god, was this an eye-opener for me, because this was exactly what I was struggling with recently.
But how come? Surely it takes you a set amount of time to complete a task right? Even if you gave yourself too much time, shouldn't that just be spare time you'll have after completing your task early? And isn't giving yourself more time better for quality?
Not necessarily.
Like I said, we're pretty good at inflating tasks to be more complicated than they are. We can spend a lot of time overthinking certain aspects of them. Or our perfectionism could kick in and make us fuss over the most trivial things. Deadlines are also important for motivating us to actually do it and the closer it is, the more likely we'll get started on it. Therefore, giving ourselves too much time can make us just stretch out something and spend unnecessary time on it. Also, the time it takes for us to complete a task isn't directly proportional to us actually working on it. The anxiety/stress of doing the task is always on the back of our mind and can mentally exhaust us over the day. There's always a reminder that we need to do it and it can still eat away at our subconscious when we're supposed to be relaxing or something. In the end, you're just wasting time that you could be spending doing something else.
This is what I went through. On the weekends I was usually free, so I'd give myself all day to study. But what would happen is I'd procrastinate without knowing it, assuming I'd get it done later. But because I was 'busy' studying today, I wasn't actually doing anything fun. Yet I'd end up rushing my work by the end. So basically, I was in this awkward middle ground where I didn't get a lot of work done, but wasn't doing recreational activities either. So don't fall into this trap, because it is brutal.
Truth is, we're not machines who can do work all day. We have a limit and certain time periods when we're most productive. We can only do a set amount of 'high-intensity' work per day, around 2-3 iirc. Remember, high intensity work is stuff that actually requires your full concentration/effort; active tasks, not something passive (like watching lectures/reading notes, because you can do that all day lol). The idea is that there's a certain threshold where putting more time into doesn't result in better outcomes. So by then it's best to move on. You want to schedule tasks within your productive hours and get them done and dusted there. This allows you to have free time do to other things and actually enjoy life. So even if it's a small thing (since covid has made this wayy harder), have something planned in your day besides studying! This could be anything like gaming, watching tv shows, talking to friends, etc.
Because you'll find when you have something else to look forward to, not only is there a closer deadline that'll make you procrastinate less, but now you also have a reward after completing the task (and an incentive for doing it).
Distractions
Alright, I'm guessing this is the hardest part for everyone. Regardless of how good our approach is, you won't get anywhere if you're not even focused on the right thing. Whether it's social media, a new episode for a TV series (FATISW anyone?), video games, movies, other people, etc. I'm sure there's something out there that consistently sucks your attention away from what you're supposed to be doing. For me, youtube was a big killer in the past, though nowadays social media in general like facebook/insta/snapchat/tiktok and ironically these forums+discord have been my Achilles heel. I'll mainly be tackling social media here, since its so potent.
Now if you've also been hooked onto it, don't feel bad. There's more to this than simple self control. Truth is, these apps are incredibly clever. They're meticulously designed to be as addictive as possible, as your attention is extremely valuable to these companies. Because they're free (thus you can't just profit from buying the app), most profits are made by targeted advertisements that these guys have been working behind the scenes from. Without getting too much into it, social media is pretty good at exploiting our biology (by providing us with instant gratification) to keep us as hooked as possible. There's a lot of factors that it takes advantage of to allow this (see below).
Funnily enough, I've never procrastinating by playing video games. I have a PS4 right next to me in my living room but it's never tempted me. But my phone always has. Why is this? Well, when you think about it, there's actually a lot of differences:
- Starting: To play PS4, I have to turn on the TV, log in, select the game, wait for it to load, select my file, more loading and then I'm finally in the game (and can get some gratification). Meanwhile, all I have to do is unlock my phone, make 1 swipe and two clicks then I'm already in. It's so much easier to just start browsing social media, hence less time for you to stop yourself from doing it.
- Vigilance: When I sit down to game, I know I'll be doing it for a while. After all, it's not feasible to play something for 10-20 minutes right (especially given how long it takes to start)? However, when was the last time you intended to spend only 5 minutes on facebook? You don't expect to. However it sucks you in without you even knowing it, throwing off you and your schedule.
- Frequency: I don't game often (especially nowadays) but I'm always checking my phone throughout the day. I have subconsciously built a habit of doing it, so I'm more inclined to do so.
- Satisfaction/progression: Gaming is a more 'high-intensity' activity than browsing social media. You're more engaged in it and there's more distinct checkpoints (like playing one level/game, do this one objective, etc). But there's no end point to social media. You don't feel fulfilled/satisfied after doing it and you actually keep scrolling through in anticipation of it.
Hopefully by examining the above, you understand what factors fuel procrastination. Bottom line is, you want to make it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing. So keep your phone away, use a website/app blocker (like selfcontrol on mac) and limit how much you check it. For recreational activities, replace social media with something more fulfilling/fun.
*Bonus tip 2: Don't rely on pure willpower to simply resist temptations. It's actually a finite resource and depletes throughout the day. Furthermore, if you spend all your energy trying to avoid more trivial things like this, you won't have enough for the more important stuff. The best way to deal with distractions is by minimising how much you'll encounter them in the first place.*
Defeating procrastination
It's actually pretty simple and I think I've alluded to it a few times. Have a schedule of how your day should play out. You can't delay something for later, if you know you can't do it later. Schedules aren't actually as restrictive as you might think. In fact, they allow more freedom since you can manage your time and make the most of it. This doesn't have to be difficult!
Think of it like an extended to-do list and you can use something like google calendars. Basically:
- Place all your commitments that are non-negotiable (ie classes, work, sleep, etc).
- Make sure you factor in commuting times, so leave a good gap between tasks.
- Strategically space out your chores/trivial stuff throughout the day to function as breaks from studying.
- Now look at all your spare time. On weekdays you probably don't have much time to begin with due to your prior commitments. But on weekends you can slot some recreational activity in. Morning or night, it doesn't matter. Just have something you wanna do (something higher intensity remember).
- The remaining spare time you have, that's your study time. Use your to-do list to place your tasks here.
Scheduling does take some time to get right. Don't fuss about the specific times you'll start/stop a task, just aim to have everything done by the end. It's something you'll need to adjust accordingly and there really isn't a 'one-size fits all' approach to it. You shouldn't expect yourself to stick to it 100% of the time! Remember that even if you only stick to it half the time, it's still better than 0% (and you'll get more work done than when you started!). So just aim for consistency and make sure it's repeatable for coming days. It shouldn't take that long (5-10 mins tbh), since you'll be copying+pasting a lot of the time anyway. You'll get a lot more work done if you actually have a plan, trust me.
WOW that was a mouthful. Hope you found something useful for this. Guess you've seen how passionate I'm about this lmao. I promise I'll post something more relevant in the future. Cya in the next one!
Guys I swear I didn't spend 2 weeks procrastinating on writing this! I just had mid sems on lmao.
You know if studying was a video game, your grades (or passing) would be your objective, stress would be your motivator whilst procrastination would be your main obstacle. Everyone has experienced it to some degree. I'm sure you've even heard of those articles that will 'cure' procrastination or at least give you tips on how to deal with it. Now what I wanna do today is really look at what procrastination is, why we experience it, how it's driven and finally, how to actually beat it. There's actually more to procrastination than you might think and digging deeper into it can tell us a lot about human nature and how to optimise our performance.
Procrastination is basically postponing something for 'later'. There's several reasons why we could do this. From my experience, here's when I'm likely to procrastinate:
- Task is too difficult
- Task is too complex
- Task is too boring/easy
- Poor time management/planning
- Distractions
Making 'better' tasks
Before studying for anything, you should always have a goal. After all, if you don't know what you're doing, how are you supposed to do it? I'd highly recommend making a to-do list (in advance). Anyways,
If a task appears too difficult, complex or even boring we're not inclined to do it. After all, our brain wants to avoid unpleasant sensations hence if studying is associated with it, you'll feel a natural tendency to avoid it. However, what our brain doesn't understand is that our perceptions and reality can be warped. Just from a subconscious level, we can inflate tasks to be more cumbersome than they really are to the point where even thinking about it becomes gives us a headache. Hence we resort to procrastination. To clear the fog you gotta grab the bull by its horns and once you sink your teeth into it. Once you do, all that mental resistance (ie stress/anxiety towards that task) you've built up fades away (in other words, you're in the flow state). Therefore, the likely problems here are that you've made the task more unpleasant than it really is (difficulty), you don't know where to start (complexity) or you're not engaged enough (boring/easy).
Managing these is the same. Get a task and break it down to simple, specific, and actionable steps. For example, instead of 'study X subject' split it up into its components 'reviewing notes/doing practice questions/flashcards/etc'. This doesn't have to take long! Just add these 'sub-categories' underneath your main tasks. What's even better is that now you have a sense of progression, as you can cross off tasks once you complete them. This is important for keeping you engaged in the overall process and pushing you to complete the next one. Not only that, but having a plan provides you a sense of reassurance and confidence towards your studies (which is pretty important for your long term motivation, more on this later).
*Bonus tip: As a rule of thumb, focus on tasks, not time. Rather than aiming to study for X hours a day, be oriented towards results (ie your to-do list) and your time will be secondary to how much work you get done. This is important as you can free valuable time for other activities.*
What about motivation? Don't worry about it for now. Most times you'll find that it comes after you start working. Now if you're actually struggling with burnout in general, that's a topic for another day.
Time management
Consider the following statement:
'Work expands to fill the time allotted for it'
This right here is Parkinson's Law and helps you prevent setting unreasonable deadlines. Deadlines are pretty important. I'm sure you've noticed how your productivity spikes up during those last few hours before an assignment's due. Basically, if you give yourself a whole day to complete a task, chances are it'll take you all day to do it. My god, was this an eye-opener for me, because this was exactly what I was struggling with recently.
But how come? Surely it takes you a set amount of time to complete a task right? Even if you gave yourself too much time, shouldn't that just be spare time you'll have after completing your task early? And isn't giving yourself more time better for quality?
Not necessarily.
Like I said, we're pretty good at inflating tasks to be more complicated than they are. We can spend a lot of time overthinking certain aspects of them. Or our perfectionism could kick in and make us fuss over the most trivial things. Deadlines are also important for motivating us to actually do it and the closer it is, the more likely we'll get started on it. Therefore, giving ourselves too much time can make us just stretch out something and spend unnecessary time on it. Also, the time it takes for us to complete a task isn't directly proportional to us actually working on it. The anxiety/stress of doing the task is always on the back of our mind and can mentally exhaust us over the day. There's always a reminder that we need to do it and it can still eat away at our subconscious when we're supposed to be relaxing or something. In the end, you're just wasting time that you could be spending doing something else.
This is what I went through. On the weekends I was usually free, so I'd give myself all day to study. But what would happen is I'd procrastinate without knowing it, assuming I'd get it done later. But because I was 'busy' studying today, I wasn't actually doing anything fun. Yet I'd end up rushing my work by the end. So basically, I was in this awkward middle ground where I didn't get a lot of work done, but wasn't doing recreational activities either. So don't fall into this trap, because it is brutal.
Truth is, we're not machines who can do work all day. We have a limit and certain time periods when we're most productive. We can only do a set amount of 'high-intensity' work per day, around 2-3 iirc. Remember, high intensity work is stuff that actually requires your full concentration/effort; active tasks, not something passive (like watching lectures/reading notes, because you can do that all day lol). The idea is that there's a certain threshold where putting more time into doesn't result in better outcomes. So by then it's best to move on. You want to schedule tasks within your productive hours and get them done and dusted there. This allows you to have free time do to other things and actually enjoy life. So even if it's a small thing (since covid has made this wayy harder), have something planned in your day besides studying! This could be anything like gaming, watching tv shows, talking to friends, etc.
Because you'll find when you have something else to look forward to, not only is there a closer deadline that'll make you procrastinate less, but now you also have a reward after completing the task (and an incentive for doing it).
Distractions
Alright, I'm guessing this is the hardest part for everyone. Regardless of how good our approach is, you won't get anywhere if you're not even focused on the right thing. Whether it's social media, a new episode for a TV series (FATISW anyone?), video games, movies, other people, etc. I'm sure there's something out there that consistently sucks your attention away from what you're supposed to be doing. For me, youtube was a big killer in the past, though nowadays social media in general like facebook/insta/snapchat/tiktok and ironically these forums+discord have been my Achilles heel. I'll mainly be tackling social media here, since its so potent.
Now if you've also been hooked onto it, don't feel bad. There's more to this than simple self control. Truth is, these apps are incredibly clever. They're meticulously designed to be as addictive as possible, as your attention is extremely valuable to these companies. Because they're free (thus you can't just profit from buying the app), most profits are made by targeted advertisements that these guys have been working behind the scenes from. Without getting too much into it, social media is pretty good at exploiting our biology (by providing us with instant gratification) to keep us as hooked as possible. There's a lot of factors that it takes advantage of to allow this (see below).
Funnily enough, I've never procrastinating by playing video games. I have a PS4 right next to me in my living room but it's never tempted me. But my phone always has. Why is this? Well, when you think about it, there's actually a lot of differences:
- Starting: To play PS4, I have to turn on the TV, log in, select the game, wait for it to load, select my file, more loading and then I'm finally in the game (and can get some gratification). Meanwhile, all I have to do is unlock my phone, make 1 swipe and two clicks then I'm already in. It's so much easier to just start browsing social media, hence less time for you to stop yourself from doing it.
- Vigilance: When I sit down to game, I know I'll be doing it for a while. After all, it's not feasible to play something for 10-20 minutes right (especially given how long it takes to start)? However, when was the last time you intended to spend only 5 minutes on facebook? You don't expect to. However it sucks you in without you even knowing it, throwing off you and your schedule.
- Frequency: I don't game often (especially nowadays) but I'm always checking my phone throughout the day. I have subconsciously built a habit of doing it, so I'm more inclined to do so.
- Satisfaction/progression: Gaming is a more 'high-intensity' activity than browsing social media. You're more engaged in it and there's more distinct checkpoints (like playing one level/game, do this one objective, etc). But there's no end point to social media. You don't feel fulfilled/satisfied after doing it and you actually keep scrolling through in anticipation of it.
Hopefully by examining the above, you understand what factors fuel procrastination. Bottom line is, you want to make it easier to do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing. So keep your phone away, use a website/app blocker (like selfcontrol on mac) and limit how much you check it. For recreational activities, replace social media with something more fulfilling/fun.
*Bonus tip 2: Don't rely on pure willpower to simply resist temptations. It's actually a finite resource and depletes throughout the day. Furthermore, if you spend all your energy trying to avoid more trivial things like this, you won't have enough for the more important stuff. The best way to deal with distractions is by minimising how much you'll encounter them in the first place.*
Defeating procrastination
It's actually pretty simple and I think I've alluded to it a few times. Have a schedule of how your day should play out. You can't delay something for later, if you know you can't do it later. Schedules aren't actually as restrictive as you might think. In fact, they allow more freedom since you can manage your time and make the most of it. This doesn't have to be difficult!
Think of it like an extended to-do list and you can use something like google calendars. Basically:
- Place all your commitments that are non-negotiable (ie classes, work, sleep, etc).
- Make sure you factor in commuting times, so leave a good gap between tasks.
- Strategically space out your chores/trivial stuff throughout the day to function as breaks from studying.
- Now look at all your spare time. On weekdays you probably don't have much time to begin with due to your prior commitments. But on weekends you can slot some recreational activity in. Morning or night, it doesn't matter. Just have something you wanna do (something higher intensity remember).
- The remaining spare time you have, that's your study time. Use your to-do list to place your tasks here.
Scheduling does take some time to get right. Don't fuss about the specific times you'll start/stop a task, just aim to have everything done by the end. It's something you'll need to adjust accordingly and there really isn't a 'one-size fits all' approach to it. You shouldn't expect yourself to stick to it 100% of the time! Remember that even if you only stick to it half the time, it's still better than 0% (and you'll get more work done than when you started!). So just aim for consistency and make sure it's repeatable for coming days. It shouldn't take that long (5-10 mins tbh), since you'll be copying+pasting a lot of the time anyway. You'll get a lot more work done if you actually have a plan, trust me.
WOW that was a mouthful. Hope you found something useful for this. Guess you've seen how passionate I'm about this lmao. I promise I'll post something more relevant in the future. Cya in the next one!
