Procrastination–Pulling it all Together
The past couple of weeks have been on procrastination, probably the single most common pothole my students encounter in managing their time to get the grade they want.
If you’ve been following along, you will have three sheets of paper (electronic, bamboo, doesn’t matter).
- The first sheet will have a list on the left of a few areas where procrastination is a problem for you, and a list on the right, where you will have a list of areas where procrastination is not a problem for you.
- The second sheet will list the reasons that you have identified as your particular sabotagers.
- The third sheet will list what it is about those projects, tasks, or activities that somehow, you just get done–your particular facilitators.
Using this information to move more items from the “problem” side of the page to the “not a problem” side of the page is likely the second most useful benefit my students gain. I wish I could give you the key to the chest with the magic wand that would do this for you, but because everyone’s problem areas, success areas, sabotagers, and facilitators are different, every plan needs to be different, and needs to be customized, trialled, practiced and adapted.
We’ll walk through the process of just one possibility, and you can adapt to your situation as we go along.
- First, you will recall I started my stop-putting-off-housework plan with baby steps, steps that were easy to follow. I also started with a non-scary project. Pick a problem area from that first sheet that isn’t too scary–you’re learning process here, not finishing your dissertation. Maybe it’s reading your notes over before you go to bed.
- It has to be something you commit to. You make a short commitment statement that you can easily recall. Mine was, “I’m not going to lose another security deposit.” Yours might be “I’m going to look at my notes when I get home after class.”
- Then look at your sheet of sabotagers–do any of them fit why the notes don’t get read?
Maybe it’s because when you get home from class, you feel you’ve put in a day, and just don’t feel like it. There are more fun things to do, more fun people to text.
- Look at your list of facilitators–is there anything there that can nudge you into doing something that is less fun than texting, gaming? Maybe it’s that you always put your leftovers in the fridge or garbage when you get home so your backpack doesn’t become a lab specimen. You might tie in unloading your backpack to taking out your notes and putting them on your desk.
- DECISION TIME. You’ve had a glass of juice. Your notes are on your desk. You say out loud “I’m going to look at my notes.” And you go do that.
- You endorse yourself–you say “’Hey, a small step here, and I did it today!”
Okay, that sounds pretty trivial, pretty easy. No biggie. I will tell you, it is a biggie. Anything that is on the left side of your page is important, in some way to something of value to you.
And any step that helps move one of those issues over to the right side of the page is a biggie, don’t diss success. It’s not so easy, regardless of how easy it seems, not to slip, to have setbacks, to have to make modifications, to wish for more tools to tackle the barriers.
And that is why I have clients.
If you have success stories of your own, please connect, or if you know where that magic wand is . . . [email protected]