By Vaidehi Rawool
The deadline approaches you with the speed of light and with every inch that the minute hand gains, your brows knit even tighter. You make a resolute decision to open your laptop and finish the whole assignment off by pulling an all-nighter. Three hours later you find yourself on a social networking site whose window you left open the last time you used your laptop. The end result, with frayed nerves and brain cells in overdrive, you finish it seconds away from the deadline. After submitting it, you are filled with dread as to the quality, worry, guilt and a load of regret for putting it off till the last moment.
Today the speed of time is faster than the speed of light, which is evident from the enormous amount of tasks one has on a daily basis. Being a student in these times is the most difficult task to do. The major reason for this is that you are expected to be aprofessional at multitasking. With a mountain of things to do, procrastination is almost inevitable.
Most of the times we procrastinate not because we are lazy. There are various reasons for the same and some of you who procrastinate might not even know that you do it. If you keep waiting for the best time to start something, or you keep second guessing yourself in terms of the execution of the assignment. Sometimes people very under the wrong belief of working best under pressure, let the pressure build, so instead of doing the task at hand, you complete all the other tasks possible.
So how do you avoid procrastination?
Humans as a rule love incentives, all the marketing people out there would be nodding their heads vigorously to this sentence. When you try and provide an incentive for yourself, you tend to work better. You can begin with bargaining with yourself, say for instance only if you complete a certain task, you can go out to watch a movie with your friends.
Talk to yourself, it helps. Make a to-do list of things you need to do so as to complete the task at hand. Leave small notes to yourself, which will motivate you and let you avoid the guilt that you feel later on.
Try and avoid all sorts of distractions possible, emptying your bookmark bar helps a lot. Make a list of websites and apps that you may turn to while working and try and avoid each one of them.
Curb the urge to take a breather while working, try not to talk yourself into opening your social media account just for a minute when you are well aware that you might end up spending more than an hour on it.
Break the assignment into small parts. Usually it so happens that finishing something really big at one go seems very daunting. To avoid the same you can very well start small.
Ask a friend to help you out in completing the assignment. May it be helping in the brain storming process or reminding you about your deadline, it is always better to have company while working so as to speed up the task.
Be aware of the fact that you procrastinate, sometimes if not quite often. It’s imperative to look for the reasons as to why you procrastinate and then slowly try to eliminate them.
In the end it all drizzles down to staying focus and realising the ultimate goal. Make sure you prep yourself up and keep yourself motivated till you finish the task and you will be at the end before you even know it!
