Beating College Procrastination

I often see students in my classes who leave things to the last moment, waiting for the adrenaline rush of a deadline to motivate them to start their assignment or prepare for their exam.

However, the reality is that the pressure of a deadline results in student stress, poorer quality of academic work and an ineffective use of your time.

Here are a number of tips to beat procrastination for time management students.

• Use variety. Try to study three different things each day. By changing tasks you renew your energy – if you spend too long on one task you concentration will flag.
• Work Intensely. Work in intensively for short periods of time. Have 10 minutes off for every hour of study. In that 10 minutes run around and get your body re-invigorated. This keeps your attention high.
• Divide and conquer. For tasks that seem insurmountable, such as an assignment, in which you don’t know where to start. Well start by breaking the assignment into smaller tasks. These smaller tasks could be collecting your readings, reading 2 articles a day and making notes, drafting an introduction and so forth. Put your tasks into bite-sized pieces and put them into a logical sequence to complete the large task.
• Prioritize. Set a high priority for the task that you are continually putting off. By setting a high priority in your To Do list it is difficult to avoid.
• Jump In. Take action, even if you spend 5 minutes on the task each day.
• A Pros and Cons List. Draw up a pros and cons list of doing the task. Often a task that you continually put of has high emotional content for you. By drawing up a pros and cons list you look at this unpleasant task that you have been avoiding in a more objective way.

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