How to overcome procrastination?
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“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.”
– Francis Bacon
We often put things off when we don’t feel like doing them, and it is only a part of being human. Procrastination is one of those things that everyone at some point or the other come down with. Think about the last time you found yourself watching Netflix or sleeping when you really should have been preparing for your exams or giving mock tests? While common, procrastination can have a detrimental influence in your life, including your rank.
As you consider your procrastination while struggling to adopt different habits, try to be kind with yourself. Punishing yourself every time you realize you’ve postponed something won’t help you change. Rewarding yourself when you make progress will.
Here are few steps that could help you overcome procrastination and evade the stress, anxiety and poor performance that stems from completing syllabus at the last moment.
- Be aware: First, to beat procrastination you need to have a clear understanding of the reasons “why” you procrastinate and “what” purpose does procrastination serves in your life. In order to come up with a compelling solution, you have to understand the root of the problem. Like most problems, awareness and self-realization are the keys to beckoning how to stop lagging.
- Evaluate: Assess what are the feelings that give birth to procrastinating and how does it make you feel? Also, highlight the positive, productive feelings- do you want to change them and be better?
- Change your perspective: Your outlook wins more than half of the battle. Visualize a bigger picture. Having small short- term goals towards your dreams will prove to be efficient in the long run. Look for what’s interesting about, or what you want to get out of an exam beyond just the good rank.
- Stay committed: If ever, you feel stuck, start with committing to complete a small task and write it down. After finishing, reward yourself. Then, make a schedule or ‘to-do’ list of chapters or things you can promise to complete by the end of the day and follow through no matter the circumstances. By doing so, you will slowly and gradually build trust in yourself to reach your set goals timely.
- Environment: When preparing for your entrance exams, choose sensibly where you are studying. Continually engaging yourself in situations where you don’t get much done such as, studying in your bed, at sofa, beside your mobile phone or with friends can be a kind of procrastination wherein you avoid studying.
- Goals: Focus on what you want to do instead of what you want to dodge. Think about the fruitful reasons for doing a task by setting encouraging, real and meaningful goals for yourself. List three positive outcomes of achieving your goals and always keep them in mind.
- Be realistic: Achieving goals and adopting new habits while changing the existing ones requires both time and effort. Don’t let expectations that you can’t meet stand in the way of your dreams. Consider all the possible setups of what will happen if you succeed or God forbidden fail in a particular task. No matter what, just don’t stress too much.
- Self-talk: Pay heed to how you think, and talk to yourself. Make sure that you have conversation with yourself in ways that remind you of your goals while substituting old, self-defeating habits of talking. Replace, “I can’t…” with “I will…”
- Schedule: All work and no play kind of schedule is most likely to cause you an innumerable amount of angst. So, make a schedule which is flexible and which allows you to do things which are necessary. Keep a track of time you spend towards your goals and reward yourself for it. This will not only dampen feelings of being overwhelmed but will also surge contentment in what you get done.
