“Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow.”

— Something that you should never tell yourself.

I wake up at 7am, and the first thing I do after opening my eyes, stretching and groaning about how tired I am… is grab my phone. Perhaps I have a bit of a cell phone addiction. 

I methodologically look through my notifications, starting with my e-mail inbox and ending with Snapchat; the number of snaps I receive in the wee hours of the night is concerning. I don’t sleep unreasonably early— I think that midnight is a good bedtime— and yet I never fail to wake up to a collection of snaps from my friends. About schoolwork.

“Late night midterm cramming :(“
“I have an essay due tmr & only 1000 words to go 🙃”
“Why does this 500 word reflection take so long?”

In a previous post, I discussed my strategies for overcoming the battle with energy (or rather, lack thereof). A lot of those points are relevant to the topic of today’s post, too, so I encourage you to take a look! However, this time, I want to focus more on procrastination and how to avoid the stress of writing a paper at 3am, the morning that it’s due!

Keep Track of Deadlines and Start Early
Obviously, if you want to avoid pulling an all-nighter to finish an assignment, you should start on it well before the due date! It’s easy to forget about things that aren’t due in the imminent future, so you should definitely be keeping a to-do list of some sort.

It’s amazing to me that I have friends who don’t keep a to-do list. They tell me that they just keep everything in their heads. My anxiety would probably kill me if I relied solely on my memory— I maintain at least 3 to-do lists at any given time, and constantly cross-reference them to ensure that I’m not forgetting anything. My first to-do list includes everything from my exam dates to my daily vitamin reminders, and I’m always adding to it as new assignments pop up. My second to-do list contains all of the tasks that I want to accomplish for the week. The last to-do list is actually on my whiteboard. I write out each of the days of the week and list the assignments due for each day. Having these to-do lists is essential to my routine, as it allows me to plan when to work on each task. To this day, I have never had to stay up late to finish an assignment, and I don’t plan to do so anytime soon!

Just because the due date isn’t until next month doesn’t mean that it’s too early to start! I find satisfaction in finishing an assignment that might be due sometime next week, and then watching my friends panic over it the night before it’s due. (This is probably a bit mean… but, of course, I do help them if they’re struggling! After laughing at them.) In fact, just a few days ago, I finished a paper due in April. It’s such a nice feeling to check something off your to-do list, and to have one less thing to worry about!

So definitely keep track of your due dates, and use your extra time to work on those future assignments. You don’t need to finish it— just start. It’s rather relaxing to write a paper at a leisurely pace, knowing that you still have plenty of time to complete it and no obligation to work on it for hours at a time (yet). If you start early, your future self will be grateful!

Set Realistic Goals
That being said, make sure that you’re being realistic! Procrastination is an almost universal issue. I don’t personally know anyone who can honestly say that they have never committed an act of procrastination. It’s simply unrealistic to expect yourself to work nonstop— you’re (probably) a human, after all, and not a machine.

Not scheduling procrastination (AKA a break!) into your routine is a great way to burnout and lose productivity. This is why I call Procrastination vs Productivity a false dichotomy. They are not mutually exclusive! (This is again illustrated when I touch upon pseudo-productivity later in this post.) Thus, when planning my day out, I take into consideration the time I need to set aside to stare at the wall, have an emotional breakdown, and contemplate my reasons for living.

Additionally, I have a tendency to grossly underestimate the amount of time it will take me to finish a given task. It’s better to overestimate and end up with extra free time in your schedule than to underestimate and cut into your dedicated crying break. 

What I like to do is not only create a list of all the things I need to accomplish, but also add (over)estimates of the amount of time I need to dedicate to that task to complete it. Being able to see how many hours of work I have left is, for me, a much better indicator of how on-track or off-track I am than simply seeing a list of items I need to do. 

Utilize Your Weekends
The weekends are so important. I always aim to complete my assignments for the week during my weekend, because I know that I will be exhausted during the school week. This is a habit that I started back in first year, due to the workload of Science One, and I haven’t looked back since! I get incredibly stressed out if I don’t manage to finish at least a good fraction of my tasks for the week during the weekend.

The weekends are your chance to pay your sleep debt, catch up on schoolwork and recover your sanity, so it’s essential that you take full advantage of them! Of course, if you have volunteering and/or work, the weekends might not provide such an abundance of opportunity and time. For example, I have volunteering on Saturdays, so I basically only have Sundays off. People who have obligations on both Saturday and Sunday may find themselves burnt out. Nonetheless, even doing a little bit of work is better than nothing at all.

The Pomodoro Technique
I’m sure you’ve heard of this technique before, but in the off-chance that you haven’t, it’s quite simple. The theory is that you set a timer (typically for 25 minutes) and you give a task your undivided attention for that set duration (called a Pomodoro). Once the time is up, you take a 5 minute break before beginning another Pomodoro. After 4 Pomodoros, you allow yourself a 15 minute break.

In order for this system to work, you need to have enough self-discipline to not cheat. It would be pointless to cheat, anyway. The goal of the Pomodoro technique is to increase productivity! There are plenty of apps available out there if you want something to track your progress, but the idea is straightforward enough that you could also do without. 

The purpose of this technique is to break up your work into management chunks, and provide you with some sanity breaks. Also, over time, starting the timer comes to represent a vow to be productive, and seeing the timer tick down gives a sense of urgency to complete the task at hand. Though I haven’t had to use the Pomodoro technique much recently, it served me well during my high school years and my first year of university. Nowadays, I prefer to work uninterrupted for hours at a time. 

Okay, wait, but how do I actually follow any of this advice and stop procrastinating?
Indeed, it’s way easier to give and receive advice than it is to put in the effort to follow the advice. Surely, most people are aware of what they should be doing, but then they end up not doing it.

This is also the case for me, and basically everyone at some point in time. I’ll spend time planning out my day, and then end up watching a movie, falling asleep, or playing video games instead of following my plans. Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to do things. Ultimately, you’re the one in control of your own actions.

The things that really motivate me are anxiety and accountability. I get anxiety when I think about the pile of work that I have to do, which typically motivates me to be productive. I like to write messages to myself when I notice that I’m falling off-track, to remind myself of why I’m a student and why I need to study to succeed. 

As for accountability, having motivated friends to study with can be really helpful. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m a big fan of study calls and study groups. Even just announcing to someone what you plan to accomplish for the day can be a helpful starting point! If I tell someone what I intend to do, I feel more obligated to accomplish it. 

Finally, the most important thing is that you just start. Don’t overthink it so much. Take a deep breath and start working on the task! The simple action of pressing the start button on my Pomodoro timer can help give me that extra push to actually start if I’m feeling particularly demotivated. 

In the end, though, there might be times when you’re just not feeling it, and that’s fine too. We all have those days. Take a breather. During the times that I can’t convince myself to be productive, I like to be pseudo-productive, at least! Pseudo-productive tasks that I often use to procrastinate include studying Japanese (by watching Japanese videos, reading raw manga, or playing Japanese video games), cleaning my room, and— of course— writing blog articles! Really, though, the definition of pseudo-productive is up to you (I don’t think that it’s an actual term, but interestingly, quite a number of hits pop up if you search it up on Google). One of my friend’s favourite quotes is, “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” It’s okay to just take a break to do something you truly enjoy! Everything in moderation.