How To Beat Procrastination When Procrastination Is A Part of You (By A World Class Procrastinator)

alcyonien:

We’ve all seen those posts that give you advice to help you stop procrastinating, and they’re pretty good advice, unless procrastinating is inherent to who you are, like it is to me (for real, I’ve studied for my finals the day before the actual finals, so I know what I’m talking about).

So here are a few tips to beat procrastination’s ass and be a productive person, even if it’s not like you see on Tumblr.

First of, if you’re reading this post because you’re procrastinating, read the post and then close Tumblr, and acknowledge your effort. Just be proud of you for closing the app and making a first step towards productivity. You got this!

Next advice is not gonna help you stop procrastinating, but help you be more productive. Try to set your alarm clock earlier than you usually do, especially in the weekend, and wake up at 7 instead of 9 for instance. It’s a little bit hard at first, but once you’re out of bed, chances are you’ll feel energetic and ready to kick some ass. But that isn’t the best part. Because imagine you wake up at 9, and want to start studying at 10, but end up procrastinating for 2 hours. At noon, you won’t have gotten anything done, and you’ll probably go have lunch, and then take a nap, so you’ll end up starting working at like 3, 4, or 5. But if you wake up at 7 and want to start studying at 8, but end up procrastinating 2 hours, it’ll only be 10! So you procrastinated the same way you would have while waking up at 9, but you gain like 5, 6, or 7 hours of potential study time and productivity!

Another advice that I find useful in my quest to beat procrastination is really setting myself to understand what I’m studying, and imagining studying and learning as some sort of power, which it is, really! I try to think of inspiring people, tell myself “they did it, and so can I”, and try to make myself proud.

Break tasks into really small tasks! I know it’s a common advice, but we’re gonna take it to the extreme. If for instance you have to do a math exercise, break it down into small tasks such as “answer question 1”, “answer question 2”, etc., instead of setting the task “do math exercise”. It will be so much more rewarding for you and will help you stay in the loop of productivity!

Take breaks quite often, especially if you have trouble focusing on a single thing for too long. I personally use the Podomoro (Pomodoro? I’m not sure and I’m too lazy to check it out lol but you know what I mean) technique, and it works wonders with me! I use the app Flat Tomato, which allows you to set your own times, and tells you how good you did compared to other people the day before (rewarding process!), and I definitely recommend it. On your breaks, drink a little bit of water, and do what you like to do, whether it’s surfing the net or doodling or whatever, so you keep the reward system going!

What I find to be quite efficient as well is to have a visual representation of your long-term goal is, your motivation to study this shit you’re probably not interested in. Like if you have a dream job, write it down and keep it in sight, so you’re always reminded that you’re not working for nothing, that the effort you put in the work and the effort you make to not procrastinate are worth it.

Be realistic when writing down your to-do list. We usually tend to write a lot of stuff done, thinking we can do it because we’re really motivated this time and we will get shit done, but we usually don’t, and when we see how much stuff we didn’t do, we most likely feel crappy and end up guilt watching Netflix (I think we can all relate to that, at least I know I do), which definitely isn’t productive.

Don’t work too much. I know this advice sounds bad, but us procrastinators aren’t used to working over a long period of time, we’re rather used to working an awful lot over a very short period of time. So at first, you’ll want to work a lot over a long period of time, and your brain and body will just be like “what the fuck dude” and will potentially shut down, and everything you’ll try to learn won’t stick in your memory, and your attention will drastically decrease, giving you a lot of stress and making you feel terrible about yourself. Therefore, as you start kicking procrastination’s ass, be kind to yourself, and learn to know when you’ve reached your limit for the day. Then maybe take a 20-minute nap, and if you feel better and need to study, go back to studying. But if you feel too tired or overwhelmed to keep on studying, don’t beat yourself up, acknowledge everything you got done so far, and take a moment to say “go me! I did great today!”, even if you didn’t do everything that was in your to-do list, which was probably too long anyways.

So yeah, these are my tips to help you become a more productive person. It won’t happen over the night, no matter how many times you promise yourself you’ll be productive tomorrow, but slowly, you’ll start to get more work done and feel super good about yourself, even if there are times where you might feel overwhelmed. In these times, take a deep breath, remind yourself of you got done so far, and remember that it is only humane to procrastinate and that it isn’t a fatality (if it were, a lot of people on this planet wouldn’t have a job, trust me).

Go you, you got this! Go beat procrastination and be a productivity queen/king! I’m rooting for you!