How have you been avoiding procrastination?

I am in the exact same predicament and would to love to see some more answered regarding this question and something that has helped me is

1- to remove all distractions from my environment. If you can’t then see if you can find yourself a different place to study/work. Maybe in a car, a library, a different room, just make sure your environment is working for you.

2- be around things/people that motivate you. If you have a sibling that is up to date on their work and are over all doing good, try and work around them more. Stay away from anything that could encourage you to be depressed/unmotivated/bored/tired. (Don’t work on your bed).

3- do one subject consistently first. If you have a lot of subjects and assignments you are procrastinating on or just haven’t gotten to, do one subject completely first (don’t forget to study and take the test as soon as you have wired the material into your brain).

4- tell yourself this isn’t the end. You don’t have ALLL time in the world but you know you can do this if you sit down and put yourself up to it. P.s you don’t have forever

5- delete social media while you study. Has helped me a lot. Usually when I find myself getting bored or tired of my work, I would pick up my phone and scroll mindlessly through tiktok so don’t let this be you! Delete it :)

6- honestly, organize yourself. Fix up things that have been bothering you. Prepare your work station. Wake up early and get ready for your day. If you can’t wake up early, go to sleep early! Makes a huge difference.

7- waking up earlier. ^^

8- force people to remind you of work.

9- download apps to stop you from going on your phone. Set reminder for your work.

10- when people say they aren’t doing their work, don’t listen to them. They are. They have to. Don’t fall into the group mentality.

11- you are the only one who is being affected by your workload. Nothings going to stop just cause it’s overwhelming. May be hard and annoying but I KNOW you got this!

Sorry if this was a bit of a run on :) I hope this helps anyone

Hello! I too am struggling with procrastination, but I have found a few tricks to help me better focus on my studies.

1) I turn off my phone and any other things that may distract me.

2) I use apps like Forest to stay focused. It's a fun app that helps plant trees in real life. You just need to set a timer on the app for how long you need/want to stay focused on your work and then let the timer count down. The longer the timer is, the more progress your growing trees make, you can eventually create your own forest. If you stop the app, then your tree dies and you start from square one again. I like to use this app to motivate me to continue to do my work so I can help plant trees.

3) I put one song on repeat for the amount of time I want to study one topic for and then take a break and then go back to work with another song. I found that if I only have one song on repeat my brain won't be tempted to sing along as much because after a while I realize that the song will play again so I don't need to sing along all the time.

Hope these tips help!

Hi there!

I'm in the same boat as you, but hopefully, a few of my tips may be able to help you. Like other people have said, setting any distractions aside is definitely important, and downloading focus apps/chrome extensions on your phone and computer can help with that as well. Something that helps me a lot is working with a friend over FaceTime or Zoom. We work out a plan of when to work and when to chat and help each other stay focused. We might do 25 minutes of work, 5 minute break, 40 minutes of work, 15 minute break, etc.

This suggestion is kind of harsh, but it's worked the best for me. I really struggle with most of my work, but I'm able to get things in if they're graded. However, things like reading and review problems always get pushed until the weekend because they don't have to be turned in. However, that usually catches up to me and I have to do two weeks' worth of work right before a test. Here's what I do: figure out something that you really want to do over the weekend, whether it be seeing a friend, cooking your favorite dinner, going to the beach, etc. This is your motivation. Now, people may say "Well setting a reward for myself isn't super helpful because I'll do it anyway even if I don't finish my work." To avoid that, I suggest this: whatever you decided to use as your motivation, tell your parents or a sibling or someone who has some say in what you do. Then, make a list of all the work you need to get done over the week, or for the next week, and give this list to them. Before you can do whatever you planned to do, you have to do all the work on the list and show whoever you chose that it's complete. Only once you finish all your work can you do whatever you chose to do.

I know it may seem awful to give up your "freedom" to do something, but this method has worked best for me out of everything I've tried. I wanted to go to a friend's birthday, and my parents told me I had to make a list of everything that was due the next week and any missing assignments I had, and I wasn't allowed to go unless I did them all. I had everything finished by Saturday afternoon (the birthday was on Sunday). It really motivated me because I didn't want to miss out or cancel on my friend. Maybe something like this could work for you too!

I hope this helps!

I've had times where I felt exactly the same! I felt like there was no point in doing school and felt like it was so hard to just get myself to work on something, especially during remote school. I try to make doing work more enjoyable (listen to my favorite music, eat a snack, etc) and that helps a lot.

What really helps me is I take my notebook and make an outline. How you do this is to start with your big sections. For me, they're usually SAT, homework, running (my sport), and personal (things like laundry, random to-dos). Give yourself lots of room underneath each section and label them with roman numerals. Then you go under every section and write down every single task you need to do with an uppercase letter and all the task's steps with lowercases underneath it. And for sports or SAT (any areas you want to improve on) I write goals and the things I can do to reach them.

It should look like this for example (I used dots to show the indents I use. Makes it easier to read):

I. SAT

......A. Sign up for test

......B. Score better on percent questions

..............a. Watch percent video on Khan Academy

..............b. Do practice questions

II. Homework

......A. Math

..............a. Finish worksheet

..............b. Study for test

......................1. Watch video notes again

......................2. Look over review packet

......B. Genetics (etc)

III. Running

......A. Improve pacing

..............a. Increase regular runs pace by 30 sec

IV. Personal

......A. Wash sportswear

......B. Order book on amazon

......C. Vacuum room

I feel so much less overwhelmed once I write down everything I need and want to do and have it in front of me. It really helps to break stuff down into more manageable pieces! I also feel so accomplished crossing things off and it motivates me to get things out of the way. Hope this helps!!

This has been a struggle for me as well!

My main tip is to figure out how you work best!

Some people need music, and I particularly like the tip given by @fifi_183 about playing a song on repeat to keep yourself from singing along.

But, the best way to get things done is to follow the 2-minute rule. If something can be done in less than two minutes, don't put it off, just do it now. And, if there's a project that will take more than two minutes that you've been procrastinating on, work on it for two minutes then stop. Your brain will get into it, and it'll become easier once you've overcome the hurdle of getting started, so you might be more inclined to continue working after two (or five) minutes, and even if you don't, you'll have don a little bit of work and changed your mindset about the assignment a little bit.

If a study buddy would help you stay on topic better, (as mentioned by @paw1075,) respond to my comment or dm me (I'm kind of new to Collegevine, so I don't know if it's possible to dm people) and I'll give you my discord so we can work together :)

Good luck in the future, and congrats that you've been able to keep your 4.0 so far! I hope my advice helps :)

Hi Kinsey! First off, it's good to know that so many of us are in the same boat right now. I think that with Covid being an issue and many of us being remote, a lot of us that are typically very good at school have struggled. Similar to you, I'm a 4.0 student with straight A's, but I am for sure right there with you when it comes to procrastination. My personal way of preventing it is breaking it down. At my school, we have 4 blocks per nine weeks, so that would be four classes. At the beginning of the week, I see what all I have to do. I break down the assignments from each class and choose a day where I think I can get it done. I know that I lose focus really fast if I try and do all the work from one class in one day, so I try to do one assignment from each class per day. This may not work for everyone, but it has really helped me!

Hope this helps someone! :)