2.4: Dealing with Procrastination

We all struggle with procrastination and its effects in some or many parts of our lives, and as a college student, you may have already experienced this. The good news is that there are strategies that you can use to build better habits when it comes to procrastination.   In “The Writing Process” chapter of this book, you will find a helpful, realistic list of ways to overcome procrastination, including specific ways to do this in your writing process.   

Strategies to Avoid Procrastination

Realize that you don’t have to be perfect.  Even though you may feel that the classwork you are doing has to be perfect, this kind of thinking may be what is keeping you from getting started!  Lower the pressure on your expectations and focus instead on putting in your best effort.    

Get started.  Getting started may be the hardest step to take, but it will have the biggest effect on defeating procrastination. Start with a simple task, such as skimming the assigned reading or brainstorming a title.  You don’t have to have everything figured out or do perfect work to get the ball rolling. The rest of it will be easier once you get started. You might even set a timer for two minutes and see how much you can accomplish on starting something; this will then help you become more focused and confident in what you must do.  

Establish and rely on a process. Figure out what works best for you. Take some time to write a note or make a list of what you need to do and when these should be completed. It might be setting aside time early in the morning or waiting to watch a movie until after you’ve finished an assignment. Set your priorities and stick to them.  

Set imaginary deadlines. If the paper is due in six days, tell yourself it is due in two days. Knock it out early and then enjoy not having it hang over your head. Fake deadlines are less stressful. And if you do end up needing more time, you have a cushion.  

Use Growth Mindset thinking.  Many of us struggle with fear of failure and unrealistic perfectionistic expectations in our heads.  It is like having a critic on each of your shoulders, telling you that you can or can’t do something, right?   For example, maybe you can’t seem to get started on your outline for your next essay because you feel that you are not going to do it right; you don’t want to fail at this task.  Instead, replace this thinking with more truthful thinking that if you work on your outline to the best of your ability, even asking for help from your professor or a tutor, it is going to help you grow at doing outlines and you are going to improve at doing them.   This kind of thinking can allow you to take steps on challenging tasks.   The best part about this is once you have accomplished a step, your success at doing that will boost your confidence, as it should!  

Don’t “break the chain.” Comedian Jerry Seinfeld developed a system to help prevent procrastination. He wanted to be a better comedian and believed that writing better jokes would help. To write better jokes, he thought he should write every day. His system, called Don’t Break the Chain, was used to motivate himself to write every day. He started with a big wall calendar with a whole year on a page and a red marker. For each day he wrote, he would place a big red X on that day of the calendar. After a few consecutive days, he had a chain. And then the task became not breaking the chain. You can do this also with your own goals.  For example, you could work to “not break the chain” of following your study schedule each day of the week.    

Do the harder things first.  Author Mark Twain is often attributed as saying, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”  

Of course, you don’t want to eat a frog, but the point made here applies to overcoming procrastination. If you must do something you don’t want to, the best thing to do is do it right away: get it over with as soon as possible then move on to enjoy the things you want to do. This might be true of going to the dentist, making a phone call you don’t want to make, or doing your homework for the day.   

“Chunk” your tasks.  How do you eat an elephant?   One bite at a time!  This witty and wise saying can apply to many areas of your life, including accomplishing your homework tasks, which may at times seem overwhelming. Break your homework tasks into smaller pieces, a strategy also referred to as “chunking.”   Here is a real-life example:  College student Christiana felt overwhelmed by the reading assignments in her English class, by how many and how long they were, and the difficulty level of them.  This all made her motivation to read them quite low!  At the advice of her tutor, she set this reading goal:  "I am going to read the first section of Ch. 3 and then take a break." (The book her class was reading had multiple sections in each chapter, each with a new heading.)  Christiana then read that section, annotating for main and supporting ideas as she did. At the end of the section, she went back and wrote a brief summary (2 sentences) of the section in the margin, in pencil.    She then took a break of 10 min. or so.  After that she was able to set a similar goal for the next section, and then the next, so that she was able to accomplish the reading by the next day.     

Doing this over time with all her class reading assignments helped Christiana grow in confidence with her ability to read college reading assignments and helped her break the habit of procrastination with them.   

Give yourself rewards. We all like to receive rewards when we have accomplished something hard or important.  Perhaps you are in the habit of rewarding yourself after a hard workout or a long workday.   Giving yourself a reward after you accomplish a homework task or even a “chunk” of one can help you realize that you are being successful and encourage you to keep working.   Think about what rewards might encourage you the most.  For example, would this be socializing with your best friend on social media for 10 minutes, or going outside and watering your flowers, or going down the hall of your dorm room to chat with a friend for a few minutes, or grabbing a quick snack?  Whatever reward you choose, match the size of the reward with the size of the task you accomplished.  For example, if you accomplished reading a short section of an assigned reading, you might give yourself a short break.