Avoiding Procrastination

(right now and not later)

Did you know:

80-95% of college students procrastinate, about 75% consider themselves procrastinators, and nearly 50% indicate that they procrastinate enough to severely hamper their progress. Many students report spending nearly a third of their days avoiding important and looming tasks by watching TV, or sleeping (Pychyl et al., 2000). Procrastinators both perform more poorly overall and feel more miserable overall than those who work regularly even a little each day on assignments and projects. Your stress and general feeling of edginess may be due to procrastination. College students who procrastinate in their academic work are also likely to have unhealthy sleep, diet, and exercise patterns. Procrastination doesnt indicate laziness or a lack of discipline but instead usually results from unproductive but deep-seated habits.

You can overcome procrastination by:

Deciding that youve had enough and that its time for change, particularly during a moment of substantial change (like beginning college). Engaging in self-examination, including determining which activities you use to procrastinate (e-mail, Facebook, TV, etc.) and setting strict time limits. Breaking large projects into smaller, more manageable chunks. Setting clear goals for each day such as start CHM problem set, do POL reading, go to friends recital and sticking to them. Then when youre done, reward yourself: Youre free to do whatever you choose. Adding stakes to your schedule by reporting regularly to a study group, visiting instructors office hours, weekly trips to the Writing Center, and conversations with a McGraw Center ACE Fellow. Even low stakes can keep you on track to meet your academic goals.

Getting Past Perfectionism

Instead of... setting standards beyond reach and reason so that mistakes become inevitable never being satisfied by anything less than a perfect product becoming depressed when faced with failure and disappointment being preoccupied with fear of failure and disapproval to the point of paralysis Strive to... set high standards achievable through effort focus more on processes such as revision or problemsolving outcome view failure and disappointment as only temporary setbacks on the way to success keep normal anxiety and fear of failure and disapproval within perspective and use them to focus effort to

seeing mistakes as evidence of unworthiness

improve see mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning

Everyone wants to produce high-quality work, and the pressure to do so can sometimes seem nearly oppressive. Problems arise, however, when pursuit of excellence becomes pursuit of perfection and when fear of mistakes becomes the main motivating impulse, replacing the desire to achieve ones goals. The results can often become crippling: assignments get bogged down in minor details, every critique becomes evidence of deep personal flaws. And perfectionism tends to lead, in practice if not in purpose, to procrastination and to a general and vague sense of uncertainty regarding when a project is actually completed. The challenge is to preserve a healthy strive for excellence without precluding the possibility of success. Here are some strategies for dealing with perfectionist temptations*:

Make a list of advantages and disadvantages of aiming for perfection. List, for example, the trade-offs between strong self-criticism and the quality of work that actually gets submitted. Take an honest look at how you spend your time particularly the amount of time spent on creating or starting projects as opposed to time spent worrying about and fixing them. Triage, organize, and assign time limits for assignments. And then adhere to those limits. If time runs out on the schedule, give yourself permission to move on to the next task. To help keep yourself on schedule, set deadlines with low stakes attached. Set a deadline on your schedule to produce a draft or part of one (an introduction, e.g.), and make an appointment with someone else, such as a Writing Center Fellow or your course instructor, to talk over that draft. Besides spurring progress, doing so also demonstrates the fruitfulness of criticism and the importance of sound process in writing. When struggling, seek help. Resources such as the Writing Center and The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning are designed to help students past common struggles not to confirm or to emphasize personal shortcomings. Course instructors also want their students to succeed and will do their best to make that happen. Instead of throwing work away, replant it. When working on writing assignments, try keeping two files open at the same time, the main version and a garden version. Instead of simply deleting phrases, sentences, and paragraphs from the main file when editing, cut and paste them into the garden file. Work therefore doesnt get deleted but instead gets replanted for use at a different time. Be realistic about what you can accomplish. Definitely set high personal standards for your work, but realize that no one expects anyone to know or to be able to do everything. Strive to produce work at a level that lies just above what you can currently complete. View receiving criticism as an opportunity to improve. Learning depends upon mistakes. Convert criticism received on a paper or problem set into a list of suggestions to make your work better going forward, such as getting clear about what makes a thesis

arguable, what insightful analysis of a source amounts to, or how the problems on a problem set connect up with and inform exams. For each assignment, strive to produce the best work you can at this point and not the best work that has ever been produced on this topic or problem. Fundamentally, realize that nearly all academic work at all levels tends to be surrendered instead of finished. Academic pursuits tend to be on-going conversations with the contributions of those who have come before. Accordingly, view any contribution as the latest word and not the last on any subject, question, or assignment.

Get the Most Out of Your Study Time

Make a study plan based upon your own habits and proclivities:

What time do you study best? Do you work better by focusing on one subject or task for a long period of time or switching back and forth? How long can you concentrate before you need a break? Is it more helpful for you to have a detailed plan or a more unstructured one? Try to have a clear goal for each study session, since it helps keep you focused on what you need to get done.

Find a good place to study:

Do you work better in complete silence or with some noise around you? And what kind of noise (talking, music, TV, white noise, etc.)? Are you more productive surrounded by people or by yourself? Do you need your own space or a more neutral one? What materials do you need to have access to? Do you really need to be near a computer, or is it mainly a distraction? Will you be physically comfortable in the location youve chosen? Will you be too comfortable and fall asleep? Will you have enough light? Will you have enough space to spread out comfortably?

Making Your Time More Productive

Spend time planning and organizing. Make a daily schedule, keep a monthly calendar, establish priorities for the semester and reassess these priorities from time to time. Keep your books, notes and other class materials in order. You can waste valuable study time looking for a lost book or a missing set of notes. Do some work on an assignment the day that it is given, then develop a plan for finishing it in a timely fashion. Spend some time every day on every class. Work on an assignment, read or review. This way, you wont have to cram for exams because youll always be caught up.

Determine when you are generally most productive or alert, and tackle your most difficult tasks then. Determine where you work most productively, and under what conditions. Be specific when you plan your study schedule. Instead of saying youre going to work after dinner, say youre going to finish your Econ reading and start your Chem problem set. Having a plan of action to refer to will keep you on task and let you know at the end of your study session what youve really accomplished. Give yourself plenty of breaks while studying to avoid fatigue. Take a 15-minute break for every 2 hours you studyyour brain still processes information even when you are not actively thinking about it. Just be careful that a short break doesnt turn into a long one. Use the time between your classes to read or review. Make a to-do list and prioritize the items on itstart with high priority tasks and work your way through the list. Make a not-to-do listits a great way to break time-wasting habits. Dont spin your wheelswhen you arent getting something, ask for help. Take some time off. Students often feel guilty when they arent working because they think about everything they should be doing. But if you plan out your schedule, youll know youll have time to get everything done. That way, when youve finished your work for the day, you can feel free to relax and enjoy yourself.

7 Strategies for Success

Get to know yourself as a thinker and learner. When and where are you most productive? What tends to distract you? Knowing your intellectual proclivities and habits helps you to apportion your time more effectively and to be more productive overall. Set a personal goal for each course. Instead of focusing solely on the grade, consider how each course deepens your expertise in a field of interest or contributes to your overall intellectual development. In other words, motivate yourself in terms of mastering skills and concepts as opposed to getting good grade or avoiding a bad one. Manage your time and your attention. People who devise detailed, goal-directed schedules are more productive and less stressed. And once youve scheduled your calendar, focus and stick to it by setting external stakes (meeting with professors, a reading group, or ACE fellows) and rewards (dinner with friends, TV, etc.). During a study session, be in the moment: turn off distractions (cell phones, e-mail) and dedicate yourself to a single task. Divide or continuously switch your attention and you do several things poorly instead of one thing well. Think like a professor. Instructors have reasons for why they craft their courses as they do. As you move through your courses, spend some time considering these reasons. Ask yourself, for example, why youre reading this text and this point in the semester or what this writing assignment is designed to help you to do. Review your notes as soon as possible after class. Students forget 50% of what they learn if they dont review within 24 hours and 65% if they dont review within a week. Even a brief review pays off.

Do a little work on an assignment the day its given, preferably mapping out a plan or outline for its completion. Starting a project often proves the hardest part; starting early gets you over this high hurdle with plenty of time to develop your work. Explain a difficult idea, concept, problem, or passage to a friend. Research shows that one of the most effectives way to learn is to teach. If you try to explain what youve been studying to another, youll transfer the information from short- to long-term memory, and youll more clearly see what you understand and what you dont. Take advantage of all the wonderful resources at Princeton designed to help you succeed as a student, including the McGraw Centers offerings, the Writing Center, reference librarians at Firestone, individual and group tutoring, review sessions, and ACE study-skills conferences. Visit the McGraw Centers website for undergraduates or Academic Support at Princeton (ASAP) for all the details.

Class Participation: Making Contributions that Count

Participating in class doesnt come easily to everyone. Some students feel comfortable speaking up in class, asserting their ideas and opinions, and taking center stage. Other students find it harder to hold the floor. But if the aim of class discussion is to learn from others and allow them to learn from you, lots of contributions count, including questioning, listening, and responding. Your discussion leader values these contributions, too.

Ask a question that encourages someone to clarify or elaborate on a comment. Make a comment to link two peoples contributions. Explain that you found another persons ideas interesting or useful, and describe why. Build on what someone else has said. Be explicit about the way you are extending the other persons thought. Paraphrase a point someone has already made and build on it. Summarize several peoples contributions, taking into account a recurring theme in the discussion. Ask a cause-and-effect-question for example, Can you explain why you think its true that if these things are in place, such and such would occur? Find a way to express appreciation for the insights you have gained from the discussion. Be specific about what it was that helped you understand something better. Disagree with someone in a respectful and constructive way. You might reflect the comment back to the speaker to indicate that you have listened well. If possible, point out what is interesting or compelling in someones comment before explaining why and how you disagree.