Strategies to procrastinate less

 

Start from the pitfalls that are relevant to you when you read them. If you are yet to start observing your behaviour and answering the questions about why you procrastinate, what you do instead of what you planned and what the purpose of that behaviour usually is, then it’s a good idea to take some time to do so before you go on to trying out the strategies.

When testing a strategy, it’s good if you do it for a whole week. When the week is over, you can evaluate how things went, what worked well and what was not as successful, and then make adjustments and test these during the next week. As you plan ahead, be sure to choose the strategies that are most relevant to your situation and try to really give them a thorough test.

Here are the strategies and advice you can use:

1. Make concrete plans
2. Be realistic  
3. Mini-goals to cross the threshold  
4. Train your tolerance for discomfort  
5. Reward yourself
6. Take breaks
7. Fill up your energy levels

1. Make concrete plans

When planning your studies, one tip is to think backwards. Start from the closest deadline or
goals you have ahead of you. What should be done/what should you have learned by then? Then try to roughly divide the work into smaller sub-goals, possibly on a week-by-week basis. Then try to give them a practical form so that what’s going to happen in the next few days becomes clear.
 
Use a digital calendar, or any other kind that you usually use, or some other way to list out the day’s plan. If you don’t have a planning tool, you can use the planning template. Decide the day before, when you finish your studies for the day, what you will do the next day and what time you will start studying. By deciding in advance what will happen, you minimise the number of decisions and choices. When the day’s study session starts, you should know what to do, how to do it, where to study and for how long. The most important thing about your plans is not how detailed or ambitious they are — but that they are realistic. 

Example: 

 

When you plan your study day, start with what usually hinders you. If you have trouble focusing at home, go to a library. If you’re tired in the mornings, set the alarm for a realistic time when you think you really can get up. Try to avoid binary thinking such as “it’s only worth it if I get up at 07:00; if I oversleep the whole day is ruined”. Try to reason with yourself and find a flexible and positive attitude in the moment. For example: “Even though I’ve overslept in the morning, I can do the afternoon’s work as scheduled”.

To increase the chance of following your plans and reduce the risk of putting things off, you can fill in the two columns below to remind yourself of what you want to move towards:

 

Exemple: 

 

If you find it difficult to set priorities among many tasks and determine what is most urgent, you can use this priority matrix:

 

At the end of your study week, evaluate the results of your planning. Use these questions:

• What goal(s) did you set and how did it go — What went well?
• What went less well?
• Can you think of any reasons why it turned out as it did?
• What do you want to do differently next week?

 

2. Be realistic

When planning what to do, it’s crucial that you make a realistic assessment of what you will be able to get done during the day. What are you sure you can do today? Don’t put any more than that in your planning. The worst plans are the ones based on how you wish you could act instead of what you’re actually capable of right now. Planning realistically can mean that for a couple of weeks you only plan half an hour of studying per day, if that’s what you manage on average right now. Look back at how you have studied in the last 1–2 weeks and start from that level when you plan. When you manage to follow your planning, you can gradually increase the goal for the week a little. NOTE! Don’t go too fast, as this may increase the risk of setbacks.
  
Common obstacles to realistic planning are thoughts such as “I won’t be able to complete my course if I only study 30 minutes a day for a whole week” or “I should be able to study 6 hours a day, I’ve done that before”.

Here’s what you can think instead: It’s not certain that you will pass this course, but that risk still exists if you don’t try to make a long-term change. By planning realistically, you’re working on breaking a negative spiral where you set too high goals that you constantly fail to achieve. By working a little every day, you get important practice in getting across the threshold, which is often the most difficult thing. Continuing for a little longer is usually less demanding.

Do you have difficulty planning realistically? What usually stops you from making a plan that you know you can actually keep to? Ask yourself the following question to see if your plan for the day is realistic: Is this something I could get started on right now if I needed to? If the answer is yes, you’ve got the right plan! If the answer is no, you need to lower the goal for the day until you can answer yes.

3. Mini-goals to cross the threshold

Mini-goals can lower the threshold when, for various reasons, it feels impossible to start a task. Examples of mini-goals include reading a text for 5–10 minutes, writing on a task for 5–10 minutes, or spending 5–10 minutes taking out the material you need to start a task. Once you have done this, you can evaluate how it feels and see if you can take another small step forward with your task. Sometimes you may not be able to manage more than 5–10 minutes throughout the day, other times it may be possible to add on another 5–10 minutes several times in a row. Many people feel that the most difficult thing is to start studying, and that their attitude to working for a couple more hours can change after setting a mini-goal. The strategy is useful when your motivation for the task is low, when the task seems difficult, or when you are struggling with negative emotions related to your studies.

After a day of study with one or more mini-goals, it’s important to try to spend the rest of the day with a clear conscience that you have started a process of change and that it may take a while if you’ve been putting things off for a long time. It’s not what you have accomplished that is central right now, but THAT you are doing something and can gradually build up a routine and an ability to cross the threshold.

Example:

 

4. Train your tolerance for discomfort

There are many different ways in which we can suffer from emotional discomfort, such as:

Performance anxiety — fear of failure or under-performance
Perfectionism — too high a demand to always achieve high results
Fear of making the wrong choice
Doubt of one's own ability
Boredom
Stress because we put off tasks for a long time
Shame about what we perceive as failure.

Wanting to avoid feelings and thoughts that we have difficulty managing is natural, but if we are guided more by emotions we want to avoid than by our long-term goals and values, it can feel like we are not living the life we want to live.

If you recognise that emotional avoidance is contributing to you putting things off, you may need to take a closer look at what you do in response to unpleasant emotions, or what you do to avoid triggering them. You also need to take a closer look at the consequences this has in the short and long term.

Use the model below to increase your understanding of how things are for you. Start from a current situation and fill in the columns a few times in the coming week.

 

 

Example: 

 

You will probably notice that the short-term (i.e. immediate) consequences of putting off what you have to do are positive. Unfortunately, this makes us want to continue to deal with discomfort that way, even though you are likely to realise that the long-term consequences of putting off important things are negative.

Therefore, when you are about to make a decision to put things off, you need to stop and remind yourself of the long-term negative consequences, and think about what realistic behaviour you can replace putting things off with, so that it better aligns with your educational goals.

Gradually replace avoidance and procrastination with alternative behaviours that better align with your goals.

When you’re working on breaking your procrastination, you need to do it with patience and kindness to yourself. It’s difficult to face feelings of discomfort. Start by deciding on a behaviour that you can try instead of avoidance. Here, it is useful to have mini-goals. Evaluate after testing an alternative behaviour. Think about how it felt and whether you would like to repeat the exercise again after lunch or maybe the next day.

Practice staying with the negative emotions that arise. Notice them, accept that they are triggered by you trying to break a habitual pattern, and remind yourself that the emotions are part of a stress reaction that is activated when you do something that is perceived as uncomfortable or risky, such as the risk of failure or the risk of feeling bad.

Try not to fall into the trap of avoiding mini-goals because it feels shameful to do so little. If you feel shame, you can include that feeling in the discomfort that you carefully train yourself to face. In the long run, it’s better to start by doing a little than nothing at all.

Examples of alternative behaviour to putting things off:

 

5. Reward yourself

To get across the threshold, in the beginning you may need to plan in frequent rewards for work done. For example, this may involve doing something fun or relaxing (maybe what you usually do when you put things off) after studying for a while.

Be careful of doing things that you usually have difficulty interrupting, so that the planned reward break doesn’t turn into a long delay. If you know you have difficulty interrupting gaming, watching a series or phone scrolling, you need to choose other activities as a reward. Examples of rewards can be to have a coffee, listen to a podcast or audiobook that you like, go and work out or just take a break from demands.

Once you have achieved a sub-goal for the day, you can devote a predetermined period to the reward activity. The length of your study and reward intervals will depend on where you are in your process of procrastinating less, and what is realistic for you. Don’t forget to reward yourself for your efforts along the way, and not just when you finish.

What activities, large and small, can you do to reward yourself for your efforts? If you find it hard to come up with rewards, think about what you usually do that feels more appealing when you procrastinate. Be sure to choose activities that you know you can finish in the time you have allowed for. If you have a tendency to keep playing video games for hours without being able to stop, it’s not a good idea to plan it as a short rewarding activity.

Examples of rewards:

• Coffee 
• Watch an episode of a favourite series (but only if you are able to stop after one episode)
• Play video games for 30 minutes (but only if you can really stop after 30 minutes)
• Have a good lunch/dinner
• Go to the cinema
• Spend some time on a fun hobby
  
  

6. Take breaks

Once we get started on studying, it’s easy to forget how long we spend continuously working. Getting into a sense of flow can contribute to studying too long without a break - we may not dare to stop for fear of losing that long-awaited flow. But if we work without breaks, we become mentally fatigued, which risks contributing to feelings of resistance and procrastination.

How long we can work for while remaining concentrated and productive varies, but a good basic rule is to take a break after about 45 minutes, regardless of the type of work. The break should be long enough to restore some energy, but short enough not to take the focus away from the task altogether. The length of your work and break intervals depends on your needs and your situation. For example, it may be 15 minutes work and 5 minutes break, 30 minutes work and 5–10 minutes break or 50 minutes work and 5–15 minutes break. See what works for you! There are also various apps that you can use to help.

How often do you take a break? If you already have a routine for taking regular breaks that works, you can move on to the next step. If you often forget to take breaks and notice that mental fatigue is contributing to you putting things off, it’s a good idea to decide to take regular breaks. Start with short study sessions of 15–20 minutes (or shorter if needed) and 5–10 minutes break and extend when necessary if the study session or break proves to be too short.

What do you do when you take a break? Many people find it difficult to know what to do during longer breaks of 20–30 minutes or more. A good rule of thumb is to try to do something different from what you do when you study. For example, if you read a lot during your study sessions, it’s good to do something that does not involve reading during the break.

Examples of break activities when studying away from home and at home:

• Crochet/knitting
• Listening to music
• Sitting in the sun / taking a walk before the sun goes down in winter
• Coffee
• Drawing/sketching
• Chatting with a friend
• Reading a chapter of your favourite book

Examples of break activities when studying at home:

• Playing an instrument
• Sewing patches on your student overalls
• Watering and looking after your plants
• Dancing
• Taking a shower or a bath
  
  

7. Fill up your energy levels

Fatigue can impair our ability to concentrate and lead to a risk of procrastination. Our energy levels affect our self-control – we are more able to make wise decisions when we have sufficient energy. Therefore, you need to make sure that your needs for sleep, food and drink are met. Physical exercise is also associated with increased self-control and reduced risk of procrastination.

What is it like for you?
Do you need to change something about how much you sleep at night, your eating habits, how much you move around and take breaks? What is a first goal you could move towards in ONE of these areas (pick out what you think is affecting you the most right now)?
Evaluate after two weeks by checking how you feel when, for example, you go to bed an hour earlier, bring a lunch box and a snack to the library, walk 30 minutes every day, or make sure to take short breaks throughout the study day.