You Vs Procrastination

It’s 11.00 pm, and Susan is paranoid about the examination; she can’t sleep, and she’s trying to cram a session's worth of work into her head, but inside her heart, she knows it’s too late and not able to retain much of what she’s reading. Most of us have been in this position before, whether it’s a due deadline or a project we’ve put off for so long. Procrastination is one of the most significant barriers to learning. It can make a clever and gifted student struggle to pass examinations, and on the other end, an average student who can master procrastination can significantly improve his/her grades. In this article, I’ll share some research-based strategies to help overcome procrastination.

Understanding Procrastination

Our bodies crave comfort, and it’s easy to slip to the path of least resistance; that’s why you can aim to study and BEEP! You’ve received a notification on Instagram; three hours later, you are yet to open a page. Procrastination is like an addiction and can provide temporary relief and distraction; however, it will leave us feeling unfulfilled because we would have replaced our meaningful work with less relevant activities. Procrastinators report higher stress, lower grades, and low career achievement. In our modern world, we must be deliberate to avoid procrastination because most of the applications we use are designed to keep us engaged and addicted because they earn more from our screen time, disregarding our ambitions. For example, if you love basketball, chances are that your timeline would be flooded with posts on basketball that will be difficult for your default willpower to ignore. Procrastination can become a habit when we serially put off work we should be doing, so we need to understand how habits work to break from procrastination.

Habits and Procrastination

Habits help our brains automate tasks (like using functions in Excel), freeing up space in the brain to focus on other relevant activities. If you perform a task enough times, the brain could create a pattern, whereby next time, the activity could be carried out mindlessly or with little thought to the process.

According to Charles Duhigg, in his book “Power of Habits,” the following are the stages of habits:

The Cue: Which triggers or initiates the action, for example, the notifications we get from our social media applications.

The Routine: This is the activity being performed, such as scrolling through Instagram after being triggered by the notification.

The Reward: Remember, your body loves comfort, and there is a certain relief that comes with scrolling through your feeds and seeing things that you enjoy, even if they are unproductive.

The Belief:?This is where the habit is wired in, as we believe that we enjoy the habit, and it’s our way of relaxing.

Once you understand how these habits work, you can use them in your favor, replacing procrastinating habits with productive habits and reverse engineering the cues and rewards. For example, the cue of boredom can be replaced by reading a book on our devices, and the rewards can be treating ourselves to a cup of coffee or still mindlessly indulging our social media after a few hours of productivity.

Overcoming Procrastination

In her book “A Mind for Numbers”, Barbara Oakley discusses some methods to overcome procrastination, which I’ll abbreviate for you:

Getting Started: Getting started is the most challenging part of any productive activity. James Clear, in his book "?tomic Habits" advises breaking the barriers between you and an activity to make getting started easier, like keeping your yoga mat spread beside your bed so you can wake to some easy morning stretches.

Focus on the Process, not the Product: This means creating a simple schedule for work instead of focusing on finishing. For example, you can cover a text by creating a schedule to study for 30 – 1 hour. If the schedule is consistently followed, the book could be covered in no time, with the spaced repetitions creating an advantage for learning.

The Pomodoro Technique: This method involves intense study for about 30 minutes, then a relapse for a couple of minutes to rest the brain and relax, and then returning to work after the break. This can be repeated over a few sessions. This method works better because it doesn’t eliminate distractions, which is almost inevitable today. It helps you manage and use them to your advantage as you switch from focused to diffused learning modes.

Effective Use of a To-Do List: We must understand that a to-do list frees up working memory, so there is space for the brain to process and solve problems. So, we have to get all those thoughts clouding our brains in writing on paper or digitally. First, we list all we want to achieve for the week and then from the week's list. Every night, we list activities for the next day; this activity is preferable at night for our subconscious mind to work on resolving some problems or planning out our actions.

Procrastination is a formidable foe that can hinder even the most talented individuals from reaching their full potential. By understanding the underlying mechanisms of procrastination and habits, we can implement these strategies to overcome it.

I'll be glad to help your child improve on executive functions and overcome procrastination.

Kimberly Selchan, Resilient One, and Tutor Doctor Owner

My mission: “To help today's youth become tomorrow's successful adults.”

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