Now or Later? The Art of Procrastination

I used to think that I was a chronic procrastinator, until Wednesday's class when Dr. Bulmin described the various characteristics of a chronic procrastinator. Now, I may not be a chronic procrastinator, but I definitely have learned the art of procrastinating.

In high school I could get away with it. The assignments we had were relatively short and there weren't that many of them. Unfortunately, college makes this routine a little difficult. First semester I took three writing intense courses that were all on the same paper schedul

e. This meant that every five weeks I had three major papers due. I never spread the work out and I was always cramming my writing in until minutes before the papers were due. After spending the past semester in College Learning Strategies I have learned how muc

h easier it can be to break up and spread out the work over a week or two. It really pays to not procrastinate.

One method I found particularly helpful was chunking the task. Often times the assignments we get in college aren't just a worksheet, they're papers or 30 page readings or exams on five chapters.With such large or long assignments, it's easy to get overwhelmed, and in my case to procrastinate until I have no choice but to tackle it all at once. Chunking the task makes it much easier to approach. Even before starting to study, read or write, you look at the task as a whole and divide it into smaller more manageable, less intimidating tasks. As someone who loves to make lists and check things off this is perfect. I can make lots of small tasks to accomplish and then slowly start to check them off. I am currently using chunking the task for my COM 107 research paper and it has really made the whole process fly by. I will definitely continue to chunk the task.

Last week we talked about motivation. I feel that motivation and procrastination really go hand in hand. You need to be motivated not to procrastinate. I tried the time waster chart earlier in the week. This chart helped me to see what I could use as motivation, or rewards for not procrastinating. In the chart on the left hand side I listed all of the things I do when I'm procrastinating and in the right hand side I listed all of the things I avoided doing like studying and other work. This is a good method for figuring out where you're wasting time and possible rewards, but I'm not sure how helpful it was at preventing procrastination. I know that even if I don't study for my NSD 225 exam, I'm still gonna Skype my boyfriend or go on Facebook. This method is probably best for the occasional procrastinator who has the will power and determination to stay away from Facebook or the television.

The year is almost over and I'm hoping I can hold off on procrastinating long enough to get through my finals.