Stop Procrastinating & Get Your Work Done

There is less than a month left of classes so now is the time to break the habit of leaving assignments until the last minute aka Procrastinating. College students everywhere struggle with procrastination including myself. One reason why many college students continue to procrastinate is because even though they stay up late writing an essay or studying for an exam if they get a good grade on their assignment they will continue to procrastinate because they have not experienced negative consequences. However if the same student does the same things but either gets low grades or does not have enough time to finish assignments they might decide to stop procrastinating and change their behavior.

I am chronic procrastinator which is especially bad because since the semester is ending I have several projects, essays and exams to complete so I can definitely not afford to be lazy and wait until the day before or the day these assignments are do to complete them. Sometimes when I have an assignment do I avoid the assignment by doing laundry or cleaning my room just so I can keep myself busy so I will have an excuse not to complete the task. Another bad habit I have is criticizing myself which prevents me from even attempting to study or write a paper because I believe that I can not do the task and I am afraid to fail. The worst thing that I do is when I lie to myself and allow myself to believe that I have everything in control when I know that this is not the case. I know that if I want to change my procrastination behavior and become a better student then I need to stop procrastinating. This week I used 2 different anti-procrastination strategies that helped me to evaluate my procrastination which were Time Wasters and Admitting the Consequences. I used both of these strategies for my WRT 205 class because I have a major 8 page essay due on April 18th that is worth 30% of my grade that I have been putting off and it is important that I do well on this last essay because it is worth alot more than the first two essays were worth. I also want/need to do well on this essay because on my previous essay which was due the Monday after Spring Break I did not do as well as I wanted to because I procrastinated and waited until the night before to write the essay instead of working on the essay during spring break like I should have.

Strategies

The 1st strategy I used was the Time Wasters strategy. Time Wasters are anything that you use to waste time that should be spent on doing an assignment. My four main Time Wasters are Facebook, texting, watching tv, and instant messaging. To use this strategy you make two columns in the left column you write your time wasters and in the right column you write the tasks that you avoided. Below is a picture of my Time Wasters chart.

Time Wasters for WRT 205

The 2nd strategy I used was the Admitting the Consequences Strategy. This strategy forced me to admit the consequences of my procrastination behavior to myself and did not allow me to continue lying to myself. To use this strategy you make three separate columns in the left column write tasks, in the middle column write consequences, and in the last column write rating. After you have created this chart in the left column jot down the tasks that you have been procrastinating about. Then in the middle column you write down the consequences you had as a result of procrastination. In the right column you rate each consequence as negative, insignificant or positive. Next you decide if your procrastinating behavior needs to change or not. The last step is to look at all of your negative consequences and make a plan to stop this consequences from occurring again.

Admitting the Consequences for WRT 205

Evaluation

Both of these strategies showed me that I need to stop procrastinating if I want to finish the semester strong because by procrastinating I am hurting myself and causing myself unnecessary stress. The Time Wasters strategy showed me that I have been wasting alot of time online and texting which causes me to stay up late at night completing assignments. After I realized this I decided to write a page of a draft then spend 20-30 minutes on facebook or texting so that way I do not let these thing distract me. When I did the Admitting the Consequences strategy I realized that all of the tasks that I was procrastinating affected my ability to do the next task. For example since I did find my 3 secondary sources for the paper until the last minute I was unable to write my draft and my annotated bibliograpghy. I liked this strategy alot because it made me rate my consequences which showed me that I do not want these consequences to happen again so I need to make a plan to prevent this from happening in the future. I am a visual learner so both of these strategies worked well for me because I was able to write down all of the tasks that I was procrastinating which allowed me to see that my behavior needs to change.

If you are having trouble with procrastination try using the two strategies I mentioned in my blog. Remember as Benjamin Franklin once said "You may delay, but time will not".