3 Ways to End Procrastination

“Procrastination: The action of delaying or postponing something”

Currently I’m in the middle of exam week. I don’t know what had actually happened to me, but I realized that I had spent ample of times scrolling down social media, watching Youtube, and scrolling down social media again when I am supposed to be studying. We all must have gone through that sort of phase, right? You wish to do something, but you ended up lying on the bed with one hand scrolling the smartphone for hours knowing that there are so many things that you should do instead of just lying on the bed. I wonder where things had gone wrong and why do I always end up procrastinating? After giving it some thoughts, I eventually figured out why.

**This is my point of view(POV)**

1    1. Lack of sense of urgency

So this is the legit one. You have an assignment and the assignment is due in 3 weeks’ time. You browsed through the assignment and you realized that the assignment is hard to be done by yourself. Most of your friends haven’t done the assignment yet so you told yourself “ Nah, I’ll just wait for 

someone to do it and the due date is in 3 weeks’ time. I’ll be fine.”  Thus, you procrastinate.  

2. The assignment is too difficult to do by yourself

You realize that how hard you try, you won’t get the correct answer for the assignment. Instead of “wasting your time” figuring out things that won’t be figured out by yourself, you choose to avoid the assignment all at once. You know that when the due date is near and when you are pressured, you’ll get it done eventually. Thus, you procrastinate.

3. Social Media addiction

This is very important too. Realize it or not most of us are addicted to social medias. We spend every single day not missing out tweets, YouTube videos and posted pictures on Instagram. Social medias are created to be addictive because if the apps are not designed that way, people won’t be using those frequently. Besides, social media is also a form of escapism for many of us. After trying to do assignments that are not meant to be solved by ourselves, we escape to social medias to diverge us from the actual reality. We intend to escape just for a while but that “a while” turns to an hour and hours. Procrastination.

4. Lack of interest

Probably you don’t like the task that you are assign to, but you must do it by hook or by crook. You don’t seek for perfection in the task that you are assign to and your main objective is only to complete the task in any way that is possible. Since you don’t seek for perfection in the task that you are given to, you told yourself “it’s okay.  I’ll do this later.” Thus, you procrastinate.

There are many ways to end procrastination. Why should we end procrastination if procrastination is a comfort zone for some? The answer is time is money. The more we spend our time doing things that don’t benefit us, we are actually burning the money unnecessarily. Time and money are almost the same but there is major difference between them which is money can be replaced back but the lost time is gone forever. Lost times can never be replaced and there’ll never be 7.48pm, 4^th of February 2019 again forever. The steps are as follow.

1. Increase sense of urgency

Create your own sense of urgency. Set the due time by yourself. For example, you have few chapters to cover for your test tomorrow which will be held at 10.00 am. At 3.00 pm the day before the test, you don’t feel like studying and you found yourself scrolling your Twitter Timeline. Remember this “without a penny, it won’t be a million”. What basically I want to say is, take every simple action as something that is important. Always bear in mind that even 1 out of 100 is way better than 0. Set the time and start doing what you should do! So back to the situation, tell yourself “by 4.00pm, I’ll have to finish one chapter so in order to that, I have to start now. After 4, I can get some rest.” To increase concentration in what you are currently doing, limit your working time and you’ll find yourself concentrating more than ever. For example, you probably have set one chapter for one hour, but you realize that the topic is simple, and it can be finished within half an hour.  Instead of prolonging your resting time, extend your working time.

Short time + many input = High efficiency

Efficiency is not directly proportional to time. Hence, study smart while at the same time study hard.

2. Log out all social media

This may not be the best method, but it works sometimes. Social medias are my escapism. I scroll down Twitter more than 10 times a day. Due to final exam, I log out Facebook but keeping the Twitter log in. The result? There are days when I don’t use Facebook at all! In normal days, I spend more than 7 times scrolling Facebook but after I log out Facebook, I probably log in to Facebook about once a day or once in 3 days. It’s a huge different isn’t it? I should log out Twitter as well after this.  

3. Spend your time doing something else

This is what I am currently doing. I know that I should be studying instead of writing blog but when step one doesn’t work, you have to think of doing something else. Something beside number 2 of course. Since writing is something that I enjoy doing and something that I won’t regard as an act of procrastinating, instead of just surfing the internet randomly to kill some time, I use those times to do something that may benefit others indirectly and something that I enjoy. If you feel like procrastinating, do something beneficial that you like. Something beneficial means an activity that can improve your technical skills or soft skills.   

Everyone has unique ways to end procrastination. Procrastination may be good sometimes but, in most situations, it needs to be eliminated by all means. Say NO to procrastination!

JINN