The keyword in the title of this article is “avid procrastinator.” I am not cured. There is no real cure to procrastination. To be completely honest, I procrastinated on writing this article. That being said, I want to let you in on a secret—if you’re like me, you’re not alone. There are far too many people in our generation in college who struggle just the same. I’m going to tell you just why and just how you can begin to look at this problem from a healthier perspective.
While procrastination is a case-by-case issue, it’s not necessarily our fault. For millennials and Gen Z especially, we grew up in a time of fast-changing technological feats. Our brains have grown more accustomed to inventions that felt impossible to our parents. We are so comfortable with modern technology that we pick up on things faster and faster every time something new comes about. It has come to the point where we expect technology to be high speed. Gen Z was still in elementary school back when older generations had to wait twelve minutes for a computer to boot up.
Fast forward to 2022 and we have apps like TikTok. I was talking about this in a class the other day and there was an article I presented that simply said people know that the endless scrolling is bad for them, but they can’t help but do it. Some classmates commented on the fact that TikTok has made them so impatient they can barely finish a minute long video, never mind the kind of lengthy Youtube videos they used to indulge in.
How are we supposed to focus on an assignment when we barely have the capacity to focus for 60 seconds? Better yet, how are we supposed to finish an assignment that we dread and have no interest in when we barely have the capacity to focus for 60 seconds? It feels nearly unthinkable.
It’s not your fault, but the cycle can be broken. Here are my suggestions:
- Don’t Ruin The Flow – You know what I’m talking about. When you finally get yourself to sit down and bang out a project or assignment and you just get in that groove where it starts to come naturally and you’re in the zone. Once you find that groove, DO NOT STOP. If you stop for a break you will likely turn that 20 minute break into two hours, and that’s just counteractive. Also, taking that break comes with the risk that once you start working again you’ll have to find your place and will become lost all over again.
- Freak Yourself Out – I know this sounds weird. What you have to do is make a list of every assignment you have due in a given week. This will overwhelm you and in my experience make you just want to get started with the assignments because it feels as if you’ll never finish them all. In my experience, if you don’t use this tip, sometimes you WON’T finish everything. That’s just not a vibe.
3. Call Someone – Reach out to someone that will push you to get your work done. For me that’s my mom. She’s a perfectionist and she spends a lot to help me with college, so she will always give me tough love. Spiraling just enough where you can convince yourself to get it over with actually works pretty well, for me.
As I mentioned before, I’m a rookie. I only have those three tips right now. Maybe one day I will have more to share, but that day is not today. Maybe these strategies will work for you, maybe they won’t. That being said, hopefully this helped you understand a little bit better that everyone’s in the same boat. You got this.
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