Don’t Interrupt Me, I’m Procrastinating!

By Guest Author: Kathryn Burns

Research tells us that the major cause of stress among college students is procrastination. Of course there are other events that can stress us out like money, relation breakup, and family illness, but putting off what we know needs to be done ranks up there at the top. What are some strategies a college student can use to avoid procrastination?

1. Use the “five-minute plan.” This is a mind game, but it really works! Tell yourself you’re going to work on that dreaded assignment for only five minutes. Then, work on it for only five minutes and put it away. When you come back to it later, the stigma of “starting the dreaded assignment” will be gone.

2. Be specific. It’s much easier to put off the vague idea of doing homework, than to put off finding five sources for your paper that’s due in a couple of weeks. Specificity is hard to ignore.

3. Verbalize your excuses. This one always gets me. An excuse can feel extremely rational inside your head, but when stated out loud, it can feel really silly. Make sure that excuse in your head really is logical.

4. Visualize yourself succeeding and completing. I’ve run across lots of students who don’t see themselves as successful people.

5. Plan your day.  When you make plans, and have a set time for doing homework, you will be much less likely to procrastinate.

Remember, procrastination is self-sabotage.  Don’t always depend on last-minute stress for your motivation.
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Kathryn Burns is an assistant professor in the Academic Support Center at Northwest Nazarene University. Previous to her work at NNU, she taught high school English for 25 years in Idaho and Seattle, Washington. She worked in Student Development as a Resident Director for 8 years before moving over to the academic side of things. Kathryn has a Masters in Education from Seattle Pacific University.

Comments

[tim]

Kathy:
I use the 5 minute plan all the time. One of the other things that I've discovered is that if I can give a project a good five minutes, I will miraculously find the motivation to keep going. It truly is "the starting" that is the most difficult.