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procrastination

The Study Schedule: Your Plan to Defeat Procrastination

We have arrived at that point in the semester when students are looking stressed, and are scrambling to catch up with their workload. Many find themselves losing the battle with procrastination, and end up cramming right before an important exam. Their performance is off, and they can’t catch  their breath.

Create a Study Schedule

Creating and sticking to a study schedule is easy to do and will help you win your battle against procrastination. Your schedule will help you stay on top of your work, rather than having to drop everything to study for an exam. It will help reduce your stress and improve your long-term retention of information.

Creating a study schedule is easier when you can actually see time. Use this Weekly Schedule  to create your schedule, starting with what I call the non-negotiables. These are things you can’t control: your class/lab/clinic and work schedules. Your non-negotiables tend to stay fairly constant from week to week, making them easy to schedule around.

Second, add the things you can control. Start with your sleep. What time do you want to go to bed? Bed time is an individual decision, but what is most important is that you get enough sleep. Try to make sure you are getting between 6 – 8 hours per night. You can’t learn if you are exhausted, so scheduling your sleep is very important. Next, schedule family time. Again, this is different for every individual, but it is important that both you and your family know when it’s family time. They can better understand your need for study time if they know they have time with you. Another important thing to schedule is time for physical activity. It doesn’t really matter what you do – take a walk, go to a yoga class, play basketball with friends – just make sure you are doing something. Your memory and your stress level will thank you.

Finally, schedule blocks of time to study. The number of hours needed will vary by College and by program, but all will require concentrated study time.  Try to schedule study blocks every day. You may want to take a day off – like Friday, when you are exhausted at the end of the week – but otherwise, plan to study every day. This will spread your studying out over time, and give you the opportunity to process new information within 24 hours of its presentation. You will be able to stay on top of the work and still have time for reviewing and connecting the new information with what you learned previously. Planned daily study time is the best weapon you have to fight procrastination.

Make the Most of your Study Schedule

You can get more out of your study schedule if you plan what you will study during those hours. First, work on the new material from the day. Take your notes and turn the new information into a series of practice questions you can use to review. Work through the practice questions then add them to your other materials for review. Second, make time daily to review the practice questions, charts, diagrams, and other materials you’ve created, so you are constantly reviewing and re-testing yourself. Be sure you use the study time you’ve blocked. Don’t skip a study session! That opens the door and ushers procrastination right into the room!

Creating and sticking to a study schedule is the first step in defeating procrastination and improving your academic performance. If you want some help creating your own study schedule or need tips on how to study more effectively, the Learning Specialists in the Student Success Center would be happy to work with you. Just complete and submit the Academic Coaching Request form, and we will contact you to set up a meeting.

Thoughts on Procrastination

Note: the first or second week in March is national procrastination week (depending on when you get to the celebration, and someone pointed out that this celebration seems to be observed later every year).

On the one hand procrastination is bad.  We who have this malady (and I am one) should not keep putting off that which needs to have been done last week.  On the other hand, maybe not so bad.

On the One Hand

Dr. Pier Steel teaches at the University of Calgary and is a Professor of Procrastination (are you surprised that there is such a position?).  He is also the author of The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Things Done.  In an online article he notes that some recent researchers have suggested that procrastination may have benefit in that ideas are allowed to incubate, and this process leads to more creative solutions.  However, the recent research may be flawed, and Dr. Steel observes, “The bleary-eyed 3:00 a.m. crowd scrambling to finish a project will usually come up with routine, unremarkable solutions. Innovative ideas are typically built on the bedrock of preparation, which includes a laborious mastery of your topic area followed by a lengthy incubation period.”[1]  Incubation is indeed valuable, but it should not be confused with procrastination.

On the Other Hand

Dr. Steel wrote an earlier article in 2011 praising the whimsical activities of Les Waas whom Dr. Steel designated “The Greatest Procrastinator in History.”[2]  Mr. Les Waas worked in advertising and had a long productive career.  Mr. Waas also had a subversive tongue-in-cheek side.  He began by getting a large Philadelphia hotel to post signs proclaiming “Procrastinator’s Club Meeting Postponed.”  He became president of the PCA (Procrastinator’s Club of America), actually acting president since they never got around to electing him.  Their group chartered a bus to visit the world’s fair in New York City—the year after it closed.  They became known for their 100% accurate yearly predictions, released the year following the events concerned.  Dr. Steel admires Les Waas’ combination of significant professional and civic achievement with a recognition that sometimes work is not the highest priority in life.

So there you have it.  A friend of mine once called me the king of “on the other hand.”  On the one hand don’t procrastinate.  Learn to get after the tasks at hand as promptly as possible.  On the other hand, lighten up, let go; some things can and should wait.  Of course, the difficulty is knowing which to do when.  I suspect some of us more need to hear the message of the one hand, and the others of us need to hear the message of the other hand.  Happy procrastination week, and then let’s get back to work.

For what it’s worth to my credentials as a procrastinator, I finished the original draft of this blog last December.

[1]Piers Steel, “The Original Myth: Procrastination as a Source of Creativity.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-procrastination-equation/201604/the-original-myth.

[2] Piers Steel, “The Greatest Procrastinator in History: Puts Off Death.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-procrastination-equation/201103/the-greatest-procrastinator-in-history-still-alive-puts.