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vampish-glamour · 3 years

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I know you're not a self help blog, but do you have any tips regarding how to deal with procrastination? Like a have a very important examen coming in a week and I had the whole year to study for it. And guess what I DIDN'T. And I still don't and I'm gonna fail.

I think I have a problem...

Hi! I’m probably not the best person to ask, because I have a huge problem with procrastination too. Even with stuff I want to do! If there’s a task, I’m almost guaranteed to procrastinate.

It’s really hard not to procrastinate with stuff like what you’re describing; where you have a bunch of time so it’s easy to put things off for later. Trust me, I do this all the time. I’ll go “oh, that’s not until then, I’ll do it later!!” And then I forget about it, often subconsciously on purpose, and the “later” becomes the week or even night before.

First and foremost, break the task apart into smaller tasks!

It’s much easier to get something done if it’s not this huge thing looming over you. So instead of “study for exam”, which is big and overwhelming, and also vague—which makes it easy to ignore or not know where to start, break it down into “read chapter 1 of textbook”, or “read pages 10-15”. Once you’re done that, make it “read chapter 2” or “read pages 16-20”. And just keep doing this until you’ve studied everything you need to study.

This helped me a lot, because now I’m not freaking out about this huge thing that needs to get done, and “holy shit where do I start”. Because I have a starting point, and a roadmap of how I’m going to finish.

I find writing things down helps, because then it’s on paper and not just tucked away in your mind for you to forget. Bullet journals can help with this…

…but if you’re like me, that bullet journal will become useless because you’ll never open it. (Mine has not been touched for months lmao. And since I’m a major perfectionist, setting up pages is very tedious since I turn it into an art project. I’ll try again, but make it as simplistic as possible)

Currently what I have, is a sticky note wall. It’s just the section of wall right next to my desk, and I have little labels to sort things by topic to organize it. So I can just write down tasks that need to get done, slap it underneath the topic it falls under (so for example, your “study for exam” would fall under “school”), and it’s there, staring me in the face. This makes it harder to forget what you have to do.

You could also do this with a bulletin board, but I have one of those and I use it much less than sticky notes. Since it’s just so easy to slap a sticky note up and take it off when you’re done with it, without having to worry about pins lol. My bulletin board is mostly for long term things. But it really comes down to personal preference.

Additionally, I’ve heard people recommend setting yourself deadlines and writing them all down together. Make yourself a planner that you can slap up along with the sticky notes, with set dates that you should have parts of whatever it is you’re doing done by.

With studying, the tasks needed to complete could be page numbers, chapters, topics, etc. So your planner could be pages you need to have read by a certain date, for example.

This isn’t something I have implemented for myself yet, and I mostly do it with the sticky notes. So I’ll break the task down, and write the first little task on the sticky note, then when I complete that task I take it down and replace it with the next one. I find this less overwhelming than having everything laid out in front of me, because it sort of tricks me into feeling like there’s not as much work to be done if I’m just focusing on the smaller tasks instead of the large one. But I do think it would be helpful to have a list of things I need to get done and their deadlines in one place.

And for deadlines, since I don’t have them written down all in one place, I mostly just use personal goals. So I’ll set the goal of “I want to have this done by Tuesday next week” for example, and having that goal can be a bit of motivation.

Tbh this is a bit of a flimsy system though, since it’s not as set in stone as it would be in writing. Which is why I do have the goal of finding a system that works for me where I can have everything in one place. Making lists in a bullet journal worked for me, the only downfalls were my perfectionism and forgetting to actually use the bullet journal. So I’ll work on ways to fix that.

A channel that I’ve found helps with these sorts of problems is HowToADHD. I’m not sure if I have ADHD or not, since I’m going through the diagnosis process, but the tips are helpful anyways. And I do know that people who don’t have it use the channel as a resource, since you can take the tips that apply to you and utilize them. Here’s a video she did on procrastination! She even starts the video off noting that the tips are helpful to both people with and without ADHD. So it really is a helpful tool for anybody.

On that note; if procrastination is a big problem for you to the point that it’s interfering with your daily life, I would recommend seeking out professional help. Because there could be something going on executive dysfunction wise.

Tl;dr/short version of tips;

BREAK THE TASK DOWN INTO SMALLER TASKS. I can’t stress how helpful this has been for me. It gives you a place to start, and makes everything seem much less overwhelming.

Write stuff down!! It’ll help you remember that it’s something you need to get done.

Leave this written form somewhere you can see it! Don’t tuck it away in a drawer, because then you’re going to forget about it and there was no point to writing it down in the first place.

Set yourself deadlines, and write them down so they feel more real and motivate you to get the job done.

Use sticky notes as reminders of what you need to do.

Other options are bulletin boards and bullet journals/planners. Depends on personal preference

Have a list of everything you need to do all in one place (like the bullet journal or planner)

I really hope this wasn’t too all over the place, and that at least some of the advice helps! 💖

I understand what you’re going through, so I hope you can find something that works for you, because procrastination is a bitch to deal with. But there’s ways to manage it, and if the things I’ve suggested don’t work for you, there’s lots of YouTube channels or other resources online (I’m sure there’s even books) that can offer other solutions! Best of luck!! 💕

#asks #xaosminion #I feel this so much because procrastination is a huge weakness of mine

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