From the Latin pro meaning for and cras meaning tomorrow… Ah, my days as an undergrad! I used to be SO organized… I set myself earlier deadlines for all my papers and assignment and always had them finished about a week before they were due. I wrote my honours thesis in about 2 months working only on fridays and during the week of spring break. I handed it in on March 23rd and my supervised joked that she probably shouldn’t accept it since nobody had ever submitted it so early before.
But then came grad school. I thought I could keep this up, that I would have more time to devote to each course, to the thesis, etc. How naive I was… Now I seem to be the queen of procrastination. I keep checking my email, writing blog entries, etc when I should be maximizing my research time. The truth is, my eyes are getting more and more tired of staring at the dark screen of a microfilm reader… Only 6 more weeks left!
For what it’s worth, here’s some tips on how to avoid procrastination. I’ll probably need to put these into practice when I get to TO.
Sometimes procrastinating means that you really need to take a break! I don’t think it’s always entirely unhelpful. Lately, I’ve been setting goals for myself that are achievable and manageable. That way I still get stuff done, even if it’s only writing a paragraph.
I’ve started doing that. Instead of thinking I need to go through 200 registers in 6 months or even one register in a day, I started thinking “Ok, all I need to do is go through 10 folios in 10 mins”. I find it easier to concentrate in those short spurts
I end up doing more than I originally envisioned for the day but if I think I need to do 200 folios, then it becomes too overwhelming….
Exactly!
I managed to write an entire article last term in 20-30 minute chunks, one-four times a week. I didn’t berate myself when not much got done, but gradually, over about 3 months, the article appeared and I’m about to submit it.