One of the most frequently asked questions I get in my email box is how to conquer procrastination in college. I’ve been avoiding answering this question because I have a really strong belief that tips and tricks on “beating procrastination” are not the answer to this question.
For me there are two different types of students. There is student #1 who really thrives and succeeds by planning their assignments and completing them ahead of time. On the other hand we have student #2 who really needs that pressure in order to finally get themselves to sit down and actually get the assignment done.
If you finally want to conquer procrastination in college, you need to figure out which type of student you are. And once you do, OWN IT!
If you know that you feel the most in control of your college success when you can sit down and get started on an assignment way before it’s due, stick with doing that.
However, if you know that you don’t have the will power, you don’t have the motivation and you can’t get yourself to sit down to write a paper, study for an exam, or work on a project until two days before it’s due, OWN THAT! You already know that you need that extra pressure in order to take some action. So, stop worrying about all the days that you’re not working. Instead use that energy to focus on other classes where the timeline is closer or to hangout with friends or volunteer, and then two days before the assignment is due, when that pressure and motivation kicks in, sit down and get to work.
We each have full control over when we study and how we get to work and at the end of the day you have to find the best method for you.
But, if you find that your current methods are not getting you the results you want in college, at some point you have to want it bad enough to make the change and do the actions that will get you there.
There reason I didn’t give you a step-by-step strategy on the best procrastination tricks is because my personal opinion is that no matter the amount of tips that anyone gives you, if you do not make the decision that you are finally going to tackle your issue with procrastination, and if you don’t figure out what kind of student you are, no amount of procrastination tips out there is going to help you. You have to be willing to do what whatever it takes to see the kind of college success you’re dreaming of.
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Clarissa,
Help, I am so inspired by your story.I am heading into medsurg/psych for the second time at the end of Aug and I would like to review all my power points and so that I can blow the semester out of the water, but I can’t help but feel overwhelmed trying to get it all back into my brain after a year, I also need to brush up on med math for first day of clinical and I just feel I don’t have any structure to get this stuff done. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Hi Kim, I am so proud of you for not giving up on yourself and trying to do everything possible to pass. So, the first thing that causes the overwhelming feeling is this statement “I would like to review ALL of my powerpoints”. The thought of having to go through whole semesters (16 weeks) worth of material in the next few weeks (3 weeks) is honestly not do-able. No wonder you feel overwhelmed.
This is the curse of procrastinators, you’re great visionaries and goal setters but not so great at the doing part, partly because your doing goals are way too big. You have to break your goal down into smaller actionable steps. A better goal would be, I want to go over the first three powerpoints of the semester. To achieve this, every week until the semester starts I will go over 1 new powerpoint and the corresponding reading. This will allow me to get ahead this semester. I go over this kind of stuff in detail in my course http://rockatcollege.com. I hope that helps!