I had a friend like you who procrastinated every time, not only in studying but also in almost every work. The reason is that he mostly had spent his time wasting on unnecessary things before I gave him some advice. But we were able to provide him with good practice and guide him through the proper path by motivating him. After a few weeks, he was able to overcome his lousy procrastination habit. There are many reasons for procrastination. So if we can identify those mistakes, correct them, and change our minds and the surroundings into a good place for studies, we can stop procrastinating. So with all of these, we’ll talk about how you can stop procrastinating and start studying efficiently.
Why do we procrastinate
Usually, we tend to procrastinate on work that doesn't interest us. But it may happen even when we are doing our favorite things for reasons like bad habits, destructive addictions, laziness, and sleepiness. When you have a big task to engage in, naturally, you tend to postpone that work as it takes a lot of time and effort. Also, we can't concentrate and can easily get bored when we have to work in an environment full of distractions. Many aspects affect procrastinating, such as the time you choose for your studies, your mood, your surroundings, and what kind of work you're going to do.
16 Tips to stop procrastination
1. Set targets
When we have future targets, it's easy to work for them, and we have an inbuilt motivation to work continuously. When we have goals like what kind of person I'm going to be and what kind of service I do for the world, we can easily make a path towards that. Also, we can't continuously work unless we don't have any goals.
So the first thing you need to do is have a target for yourself. It doesn't need to be a big target; you can have an easy target like, I'm going to get better grades in the final exam, so I have to study my best to have a good result. Likewise, if you have such motivation, you can make your mind think about your goal each time you feel like giving it up. If you try to postpone any task, your mind will remind you that in order to reach your goals, you need to work hard instead of wasting time. So keeping a target for yourself is an essential thing to avoid procrastination.
2. Start with small tasks.
Imagine your mom asks you to do one of two tasks; one is to switch on the house's lights, and the other is to make dinner. Out of these two, you probably choose the first task, which is very easy. Similarly, in our studies, if we start our studying with the biggest job, we'll surely get bored in seconds.
But if we can start from the minor works and carry on, we naturally tend to work continuously. Accordingly, when we have studied simple tasks for a while, we even get the motivation to engage in those challenging tasks. If you can try this, you'll surely find out how magically this stops your procrastination and puts you in the mood to start studying.
3. Break big tasks into chunks
Imagine you’re climbing a mountain. But if you try to climb the hill at once, you’ll end up frustrated. But what if you can section this journey into small parts and climb them one by one? You can climb one part in a certain period, have a break and again continue the hike.
Similarly, we can use this method to avoid procrastination. When we have a big task to work with, we first need to separate it into small chunks. Even in software development, they create each part of the software separately and finally complete the end product by connecting them.
4. Make deadlines
Think of a situation where you could not finish your college assessment until the last moment of the ending period. You postponed it, thinking, "I have too much time to finish." But when the deadline comes, don't we start to work hard, even working overnight? In that case, we don't have any procrastination, sleepiness, or laziness. We do the work productively without thinking of any excuses to quit. I hope you have the same experience.
So you can use deadlines to improve your productivity also when you're studying. When you have many tasks to do, set a deadline for each job then your mind tends to finish that on time. Like in college assessment, you can do your studies without procrastinating.
5. Challenge with friends
I'm glad this is one of the best methods to avoid procrastination. Actually, in a competition, we don't like to lose. We always try to win because we love to experience the happiness and compliments of victory. If you're a person who procrastinates, mostly what I'm recommending for you is to start from here. Gather some studious friends and try to compete with them. Based on this, I have written an article about studying with friends and groups. You can check it and have a clear idea about group working. You can share it with your friends and start studying together.
6. Meditate
You will understand this very well if you read my previous article about the benefits of meditation. Because there, I mentioned the way of avoiding procrastination through mediation. The researchers have also proven the impact of meditation on procrastination. In these kinds of problems related to the brain and mind, meditation helps overcome those problems pleasantly. So it’s much better if you can practice meditation as a habit.
7. Reward yourself
In working according to time slots and working continuously for long hours, rewarding ourselves is a good thing. But we have to choose rewards wisely whenever we reward ourselves because some activities can negatively affect our studies. If you can read the article on rewarding yourself while studying, where I talked more about this, you’ll surely get a clear idea of the way of choosing a reward, and I also mentioned some rewarding ideas there. We all love to have a reward at the end of our work. So when we feel procrastinating, we can use this method to motivate ourselves to continue learning.
8. Be organized
Procrastination can occur whenever we are unable to organize our tasks. For example, if you don't have a scheduled task list to continue, you spend time thinking about "what I should do in the next moment." Consequently, we get distracted from our studies instead of studying. So this is a primary reason for procrastination.
So we first need to make a to-do list to organize all the tasks we have to do. There you can mark the tasks you have completed and be aware of what you have to do further. When making this list, we need to prioritize our lessons to make them more comfortable. Also, we should make our studying place organized and comfortable to engage in our studies in order to avoid procrastination.
9. Study with pets
As I mentioned in the article study with pets, studying with a pet can help you to avoid procrastination. A pet is a beautiful creature that helps you to reduce stress and boredom and make you happy. You can have your pet beside you when you are alone with your studies. There are so many advantages of studying with a pet, and you can learn much more about having pets in the article advantages of studying with pets.
10. Choose a good study place.
When surrounded by a group of hard-working people, we naturally tend to work with them. For example, when we see other students working at school, we get motivated to study like them. Even in the library, we want to read a book when we see others are reading.
Likewise, choosing the best place to engage in studies is important to avoid procrastinating. If we think about our studying room, we should make it a perfect place to engage in studies. I have discussed making a better study space in the article on creating a productive study space at home. So if you’re interested, go to that article and make your perfect study place step by step.
11. Improve self-discipline
If you don't have self-discipline, It's pretty hard to be successful in your studies. It's a very essential quality you need to improve. Doing unnecessary things instead of studying by giving excuses never helps you to succeed. They only ruin the best chances that you have to reach your goal.
Think how much self-discipline a person needs to have to study by pulling an all-nighter. Also, waking up early in the morning and starting learning right away is problematic if you haven't improved your self-discipline. So first, you must work for yourself and your own success. Accordingly, your brain focuses on your studies, so you won't waste time by postponing.
12. Be motivated
As I always say, making a goal is the first step to being motivated to study. It’s much better if you can motivate yourself than being inspired by someone. Because most books and courses are made up to hook the audience to them. Truly we get motivation from those things but watching motivational speeches, and all instead of working is not the right thing. So motivation is an essential thing that is needed and to be aware of.
13. Make it a habit
Habits are things we usually engage in daily life, and no one needs to influence us to do them. Similarly, if we can turn learning into a habit, it’s become easy to engage continuously without postponing any task. Think how amazing it would be if you could study as a habitual activity like brushing your teeth every day.
As students, we must make studying a regular activity to succeed in our learning process. In this case, making a timetable or a studying routine is important because when you do the same thing repeatedly, it will naturally become a habit. I’ve also talked about a night study routine so it’s better if you can read that article because you can get a better idea about making a proper timetable.
I’d be so glad if you could make it a habit of reading our articles and sharing them with your friends while studying. Because I usually try to give simple and effective solutions for your study-related problems.
14. Eliminate distractions
When we have distractions, we tend to wait until we have a perfect moment to study, so we waste our time postponing and doing unnecessary things. Distractions can occur in various ways, such as through noisy environments, social media, notifications, etc.
Think of a situation as your whole studying mood turns into another side by your friend’s text message when you’re about to study. As a result, you’ll end up wasting a few hours scrolling through social media or playing games on your phone. So it’s our responsibility to eliminate those distractions for our own good. The best thing you can do is study in a place with fewer distractions. I’ve discussed this in the article on how to focus on online classes.
15. Use a timer
Indeed here we don't use a timer to measure our studying time but to limit our break time which we use to rest. Because many of the students tend to work slightly in their studying time and overuse the interval.
So, instead of estimating your studying time to a certain period, try to work hard as best as you can. Because if you have to stop whatever you're doing when you're working with a good passion, it's hard to gain that motivation back. Sometimes we are in the right mood to study and want to work continuously instead of quitting. I hope you also have experienced the same occasions like that.
16. Get enough rest
Having a break among your study slots is an essential thing. Working for long hours without rest does not help you work productively. Music is an excellent treatment to have at this time. You can relax during this interval by listening to some music you like.
And also, you need to have enough sleep because if you don’t get the rest you want, you will feel drowsiness while studying. And laziness and drowsiness are some main reasons for procrastination. Therefore, you are responsible for giving your body and mind the necessary breaks.
How to start studying
The hardest thing in studying is to begin the task. But somehow, if we can start studying, we are able to stay focused. The author Steven Pressfield calls this Resistance. His book The War of Art contains much more information about it. Imagine you're writing an essay. The hardest part of this is to begin writing. But when we come to the flow state, we continuously get the ideas for our essay, then the job will automatically be done.
Even when I write articles, staring at a blank screen makes it harder to write or even begin that article. So in this situation, I use a little trick. Whenever I get an idea to write an article, I note down all the sub-topics and the points in a google document. So when I come to write the article the next day, the task is almost started, so I don't feel like new work, and I already have ideas to write about. So I can get started working without feeling procrastinating feelings.
Also, there are sometimes that we naturally get motivated to study. For example, when we have a risk, when doing something we are passionate about or learning something new, we tend to complete our tasks due to excitement, fear, or passion. So if you are a person that is procrastinating every time, you can overcome it and do your studying with a well-focused mind with the tricks I was told.
Conclusion
Procrastination is a significant interruption to students and adults when engaging in work. But if we work in the proper way, avoiding procrastination is not a tricky thing. If you read this article and other mentioned articles by understanding them clearly, you will probably be able to study productively from now on. If you cannot focus on your studies for long periods, you can read my article on studying for long hours with full concentration. In addition, if you have better experiences and advice to share, let me know in the comment section. Also, I would be glad if you could share this article with your friends suffering from procrastination.
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