Should you be working on a project or studying for your final exams right now? Well, procrastinate just a bit more and read up as we give you six tips for productivity.
1. Set Your Priorities
When you’re in a procrastination snowball or vortex, you need to stop what you’re doing and set deadlines for yourself. Make a giant list of things you have to do and want to get done. This is where you figure out what your priorities are and start grouping tasks by order of urgency.
2. Make Something Overwhelming More Manageable
Sometimes the tasks we have to do feel gargantuan and that can be daunting. What you should so is break that task down into tiny steps, like a to-do list. Breaking things down into increments also you to tackle the task piece by piece and cause you to be more productive.
3. Forget About Yesterday, Think About Today and Tomorrow
One of the most common mistakes when it comes to procrastination is rather than focusing on how you’re not going to procrastinate this week, you focus on how you already procrastinated last week. If you obsess about the past, it’s only going to hurt you. Have a fresh attitude and look forward, not backwards. Plan ahead to keep your mind positive.
4. Find Your Study Space
It’s very hard in this day of age of social media to stay focused — especially if you have homework that’s online. What you need to do is put yourself in a position of having no distractions. Try turning off your phone, or putting it somewhere far from you, or simply logging out of all your accounts. You can change your password, make it something difficult to remember, and store it in your notes app. Try the Forrest app that locks you out of your phone, as seen in our 10 Awesome Apps for Students blog. Whatever you do, create a good environment to study in. You can also create a study ritual (eat a snack, listen to music, go to the library) to keep yourself accountable.
5. Work on Your Will Power
A problem arises when we know we want to do things but the things that are more immediate to us (phone, video games, etc.) are more fun. We only have a finite amount of will power and we need to do everything we can to exercise that muscle. A way to overcome that is focusing on your long term goals. Think about where you want to be in 10 years, even farther than that. Where you want to live, the family you want, goals that you can work towards. Picture yourself in the future and be motivated by your personal vision. Try and work towards that goal every single day and be accountable of yourself about staying on task.
6. Tell Yourself the Truth and Stop the Guilt Trip
People get into that cycle of thought in which they have major emotional guilt trip when it comes to what they were supposed to do. It is common for students to blame theirselves for being “stupid” or being unable to master subjects. No one is bad at things, you just have more to learn and thankfully there are numerous ways to study. Out with the pessimism and in with the optimism.
