Procrastination Destination

It is officially every student's favorite week of the year...DEAD WEEK.

Okay, so the one word that I can directly correlate with dead with is procrastination. We all have those assignments or projects that we were supposed to be working on throughout the entire semester, but somehow find ourselves starting it the week or even the day before its due.

The question of why we as students make this deadly decision of procrastinating is one that I sadly cannot answer. One thing I have made it an effort to work on lately is a way to prevent, or make it less likely for ourselves to fall into the evil of procrastinating literally every responsibility we could possible have. The following is a link to a procrastination quiz you might enjoy: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/how-bad-of-a-procrastinator-are-you?utm_term=.mvobaZdqD#.ab68Pznl7. Though it is by no means a serious evaluation, it provides some funny examples and I found myself easily relating to almost all of them.

So, on the topic of putting off all of life's responsibilities, how do we avoid this? Lately, especially during this week I have become aware of just how much I procrastinated the whole semester. Due to my lack of sleep in the past 72 hours I have decided it is time to make a change. Though its a little late in the semester to try and be organized for school, I can implement new organizational skills into my life that I can hopefully maintain for future situations and semesters.

There are three things I have promsied myself that I will begin to do:

1. Actually use my planner - Do I have one? Yes. Do I use it when I should? No. At the beginning of the semester I was great at using my planner and staying on top of things. I wrote down all of my assignments, tests, quizzes, etc. Looking at my planner now at the end of the semester, it is completely blank; not very helpful for finals.

2. Printing out my class/work schedules - Almost every class that I have taken provides an outline for the class on the syllabus. I have decided that it would benefit me greatly to print those out and hang them up in order to always know what is coming up in the next week. I receive a monthly work schedule which I also plan to print out which might help me avoid those "late to work" moments due to my forgetfulness.

3. Create goals - AKA dedicate specific days and hours each week to homework and studying, and make it a habit to follow through on using the time I set aside wisely.

Okay, so these three tactics may seem obvious, but although they are things that I know I should be doing, that does not mean I actually do them. In reality, I find myself slacking in these areas more often than not. Another helpful link that I feel many could benefit from is... https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_99.htm. This includes a quiz, as well as additional links to discover more information and coping tactics.

Procrastination is the evil we all participate in at some point in our lives, but now is the time to overcome it and become more organized. Good luck!