How to stop procrastinating on assignments – six powerful tips
Often find you waste time when you have a deadline to meet? Here are six tips to help you stop procrastinating on assignments.
It won’t surprise you to discover that procrastination is a common problem among college students. As a student, you often have several deadlines to meet at any one time, and you want to do your best. However, if a deadline isn’t looming imminently, it’s easy to put off working on an assignment and leaving it until ‘later’.
The problem with this is that ‘later’ is usually the day or night before you need to submit your assignment, not leaving you much time to research or write. And if you get stuck, it also means you can’t access the help that would have been available from your tutor earlier.
So if you want to do well at college (and stress less over looming deadlines) then it pays to find strategies to beat procrastination. And to help you, we’re sharing six with you now.
1) Find your ‘why’
The first thing you must do if you want to stop procrastinating on an assignment is find your ‘why’. We procrastinate because we need our assignments to be perfect (believe it or not, most procrastinators are secret perfectionists). And the more you postpone starting work, the more you convince yourself you’ll do better in the future. But in reality, you can’t because you’ll end up not having enough time.
The second scenario looks a bit different. Let’s say you’ve already created expectations on how you perform in school. You need to continue to live up (or down) to these mental expectations in college; if you don’t, your set of beliefs built around yourself will crumble.
If your expectations of yourself are quite low, then you procrastinate with the aim of fulfilling those expectations. If you start work on your assignment early, you might do better than expected, in which case your belief system will be challenged. So you protect yourself by procrastinating.
The solution to these two problems is simple. You must find your ‘why’. If you understand why you’re doing task A or B, or why you should start working on them earlier, you’ll help to change your mindset around them. You will focus on the end goal, which will help remove barriers to starting work on it now.
2) Get rid of all distractions
But your mindset is not everything; there’s also your environment to factor into the equation. We usually procrastinate because we can’t find the space to work in peace. If you don’t have the space to work, you won’t have the necessary focus to concentrate on your assignments. So make sure you have somewhere quiet to work, and get rid of distractions such as your phone, TV, etc. Organize your desk, and declutter your space and you’ll find it easier to sit down and focus on your work.
3) Prioritize
You must learn how to prioritize if you want to be successful. If you want to succeed at college and get the grade you need to secure your desired career, then you need to put your education first. This means completing assignments before making other plans. It’s always good to get the toughest ones out of the way first, as you’ll feel more motivated to tackle the smaller, easier projects.
If you keep pushing your literature essay back, for example, you’ll never get to it. So start with this and work on your other tasks only after you finish.
4) Get assignment help
If you get stuck you can always use online tools to help, rather than procrastinate or sit staring at an empty screen. Many essay writing specialists are available to consult with you in case you need help, are feeling under the weather or struggling. You can try out any assignment help by by English writing service and check your work for correction. Brainstorm ideas and let professionals be of help to you whenever you need them if you feel like you’re stuck.
5) Take regular breaks
Taking regular breaks is really important, especially if your work is intense. If you keep trying to push through you’ll find your energy, motivation and ideas quickly dry up. To make sure you don’t forget to do this, you can set a timer every 30 to 45 minutes. As soon as it goes off, it’s time to do something relaxing. You could listen to soothing music, take a short walk, play with your pet, or meditate. Do whatever relaxes you the most, and stick to it.
6) Get organized
Now that you know all the ‘cool tips,’ here’s one that might bore you – getting organized! You cannot get everything done in time if you’re all over the place. So buy a planner or use your smartphone’s calendar app, and keep track of all your deadlines. Don’t forget to track your progress on each assignment. If you need help organizing your desk, you could always check out some tips and tricks on how to do that on the web.
Before you begin, make sure you set achievable goals. Any successful student sets goals, and they need to be connected to your ‘why’.
Emily Barrett is a freelancer and assignment help specialist. She writes about marketing and finance, helping college student improve their grades. In her free time, Emily writes her own book and plays the piano.
