HEALTH PLUS:Procrastination will make us do everything except actually open the books and study
‘THE THIEF of time” procrastination is the student’s enemy. There is probably no student who has not experienced it.
It is procrastination that gets us to do everything except study: to text friends, to clean out rooms, to make elaborate timetables, to sort notes, to go for a drink, to have a snack, to arrange books, to walk the dog, to watch TV, to do almost everything but study itself.
Sometimes procrastination is another expression of anxiety and fear. It is important to know this and to recognise it. It is also important to know that the way to overcome that anxiety is by getting down to study and accepting the initial anxiety studying brings as the reality of what has to be done is confronted.
Putting off study does not put off the fear. Instead the fear builds up, guilt creeps in, the next study attempt is harder and the next deferral swifter. Procrastination is a malicious protagonist. It takes courage, strategy, support and skill to defeat its power.
The diagnosis of procrastination is easily made. Here it is. If you are always preparing to study, or doing something else in preparation for study, or completing something just before you study, that’s procrastination. If you are having a last fling before you get down to serious study, or if what you are doing is always about study but is never actually studying, then you are suffering from procrastination.
Time management, or lack of it, plays a big part in procrastination. Without a plan, without knowing what you are meant to know, how to organise your study or how to track and record your progress at the end of study periods, then it seems easier to decide to begin another time.
And procrastination comes in many guises. Getting down to study tomorrow is procrastination. Getting down to study next weekend is procrastination. Making elaborate lists of tasks and timetables that do not get initiated is procrastination. Switching from subject to subject, book to book, topic to topic, is procrastination and is very disheartening. It is also worrying.
Students often spend their time deeply stressed about study, so anxious and worried and disempowered about how to begin that they cannot study and just keep putting it off from day to day. This requires sympathy and assistance.
There are many students who find themselves repeatedly and increasingly having difficulty in following a study plan, have no way of tracking their progress or of feeling in control of their work. These students often come to believe that they are not intellectually or academically able when, in fact, their difficulty is one of not knowing how to study.
So how can this enemy be overcome? If you really cannot study, write down what you are doing, list every distraction, analyse the activities of your day, and try to see what got in the way of you studying and how you might overcome that.
Before studying, make a short three-item list of what you will study now and then study these few topics. Setting yourself specific goals rather than elaborate plans can get you started and help you to stay focused. They remove the initial fear.
As the fear abates study can begin. As study progresses, fear reduces. Procrastination can be unwound and the feel-good factor after a good bout of productive study is high.
At the end of every study period write down what you have achieved; this will give you a sense of competence as the list grows. You will feel your academic capacity kick in because our brains are programmable. They can be programmed to study. They can be deprogrammed from procrastination. They can even be programmed to study for specific periods: 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, which is the optimal time without a break. Like the athlete who builds up physical fitness, studying can be undertaken as an intellectual exercise, a gradual, realistic build-up of brainpower and confidence in intellectual prowess.
Guilt is the greatest inhibitor of study. Don’t stress over what you did not do yesterday, do what you can today. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not arrived but you can study now.
And if you can’t, if you are depressed, distressed or upset, if you can’t sleep, if you can’t eat or want to comfort eat, if you feel anxious, irritable, agitated, tearful or overwhelmed, do please let someone know. Signal someone who can support you: teachers, lecturers, parents, school or college counsellors and psychologists or go to your own GP who can help you get the support you need now.
- mmurray@irishtimes.com
- Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and author and director of the student counselling services in University College Dublin