Working Hard, or Hardly Working? Both are Okay: Ways to Manage Procrastination Without Delaying Success
Introduction
Procrastination is one of the most common habits, but I can’t think of anybody more of a procrastinator than yours truly. I was the biggest one I know, from childhood to early adulthood. In a previous blog post, “My Seven-Year Hiatus: How I Gained True Desire to Learn in a Seven-Year Gap after High School,” I discussed a time when I was in between jobs and finding my own purpose during a seven-year period.
What I left out in that post were the many moments of procrastination I’ve experienced, which were part of the reason why it took me so long to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. This post is more about my experience with procrastination and how I learned to manage and overcome it while pursuing my goals without further delaying success.
Not that success needs to be rushed, but there are useful tools and strategies to maintain momentum and complete tasks more quickly. I will go over what procrastination is, why many of us experience it, and the tips and strategies for managing it that helped me during college and writing more consistently.
What is Procrastination?
I’ve always thought that procrastination was just another term for laziness. I would hardly ever finish a task or put it off to the last minute. I especially procrastinated in high school. Because I had an exceptionality, I found it difficult to focus. Even with support staff helping me along the way, it was still a struggle. I didn’t see any point in the tasks I was assigned, but the teachers struck fear into me about what would happen if I didn’t complete the assignments by the deadline. I would get a big fat 0.
Clearly, their philosophy of motivation was fear, and it worked. I was mindlessly compliant not because of failing, but because of the fear of failing. As I looked back on my high school days during my years of unemployment, I thought that structure was the way to keep people from procrastinating, which is what school was designed for and why jobs were important. It’s just a way to keep busy, because without structure, you’re just lost. At least, that is what I initially thought until I discovered a deeper cause of my procrastination.
Procrastination is a natural trait we all carry. In fact, psychological studies indicated in an excerpt from Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination by the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, the common trait is described as a defence mechanism against trauma from past failures. Our brains are naturally wired for survival mode, and when we’ve experienced failure multiple times, delaying success is our way of protecting ourselves from experiencing that heavily disappointing feeling again.
All this time, I convinced myself I was lazy, but I was avoiding doing the work because I was subconsciously afraid of failure. I didn’t know this at the time, so I pushed myself to get things done, especially during my years of unemployment. I developed my own structure to motivate myself to keep going. I ended up back in College in the Educational Support (ES) Program, where I learned many tools and strategies to foster a positive learning experience, including how to manage procrastination.
Tips and Strategies on How to Manage Procrastination
I practiced these techniques through my own learning and ambition in becoming a writer. Because I had a heavy workload, I had to find balance between completing assignments and working on my writing as much as I could without much stress or overwhelm. I found a system that helped me reduce stress and stay on task, one that incorporated interests, prioritization, flexibility, Time Management, and Support from others.
Interests: My interest in writing enhanced when I was studying in the scriptwriting course at Humber College. After I graduated from there, I took this interest more seriously and decided to become a filmmaker. This did not come to fruition, as I will discuss further in the flexibility section, but a beneficial thing to come out of this interest in filmmaking was developing a new interest in reading books.
I always struggled with reading, as I mentioned in previous blog posts. Still, my film research compelled me to read more books and learn about various subjects because I figured that to be a filmmaker, you have to be knowledgeable. I read a lot of nonfiction until I developed a desire to read fiction since I write fictional stories.
This further advanced my reading level, and it enhanced my love of books. With this new reading momentum, I became interested in learning subjects that I hadn’t had the opportunity to study in high school. I devoted my time to studying on my own, which I will, again, expand on in the flexibility section, until I decided to upgrade my high school diploma and go to college to study in the field of my interest.
Mainstream College was a step up for my academic career, more challenging than high school and the upgrading program. Still, I believed I would be successful in college and not fall into the same habits I had in high school because I had a true desire to learn, a determination to turn my life around, and a genuine career interest: becoming an Educational Assistant (EA).
ES is a program designed to help students with exceptionalities in the classroom setting. Given my exceptionality, you might understand why I chose this program. Not only did I complete the program and graduate with a college diploma, but I also learned a lot about various strategies and tools for making learning a positive experience.
As I always state, with curiosity comes interest, and with interest comes true desire to learn. If a student seems uninterested in the provided learning material or distracted by something unrelated to their education, I say that instead of taking them away from that distraction and forcing them to do something they don’t want to do, we should explore what they are drawn to because it’s not a distraction; it’s curiosity.
If we let them focus on their curiosities, they will develop an interest and naturally learn what they need to learn, and we’ll help them build prioritization skills from there.
Prioritization: The minimum number of courses you take in college is usually around six. At least it was for me when I took my two-year program at Sheridan College as a full-time student. With that many courses in one semester, there’s bound to be a heavy workload. A heavy workload can be overwhelming, and you may not know where to start.
· What I found helpful was prioritizing my work, meaning starting with an assignment that was closer to the deadline than the assignments in the other courses.
· I focused on completing a school task before doing anything else, such as playing video games, scrolling through social media, reading, watching TV, and doing personal hobbies or activities. In my case, writing.
· When I came home from school, the first thing I did was homework. I whipped out my textbooks and notes from my bag and locked myself into every course in the order they were printed on my schedule.
· I focused on the more important and pressing tasks, completed whatever else I needed to complete, and then I focused on leisurely activities.
It was a daily ritual, a routine that made the heavy workload more bearable and balanced. It’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. It was my field of interest after all; it was just hard work.
We try to encourage prioritization in the school system. Educators call it the First-and-Then approach. Many students, especially with exceptionalities, have difficulty prioritizing their workload. Their main priority is playing a game or participating in an activity unrelated to their task. If we’re assigned to support a student whose main distraction is a computer game, we would say, “first work, then game.”
Does it work? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Why? Because prioritization is a skill that needs to be taught at an early age. With patience and allowing more time for the student to complete the task, a flexible environment might go a long way.
Flexibility: Flexibility is basically the opposite of a micro-managed environment. During my in-between period, I developed my own structure while exploring my interest in writing and during my self-directed education. As soon as I finished undergraduate college, I started writing screenplays. I had many movie ideas, so I wrote them based on my understanding of scriptwriting format.
It took me about two weeks to finish my first screenplay, and then I moved on to the next one, which didn’t take very long either. I sped through about seven screenplays over the course of six months. You might be wondering how I managed to write multiple full-length screenplays in such a short scope of time. Because I had all that free time, I dedicated myself to completing as many screenplays as possible. But does writing them fast make them good? Absolutely not.
Because I wasn’t a great speller, there were many typos, the margins were off, and other types of errors. I knew they were nowhere near perfect, but I planned to put them aside, gain the practical skills to become a filmmaker, and edit and revise every script before I started making films based on each one. This was easier said than done. In fact, working in the film industry was next to impossible, so I decided to start my own production company.
That was also easier said than done, but I was willing to put in the hard work to make it happen. Instead of spending a fortune on film school, I decided to start my own “personal film school.” Meaning, I would teach myself how to make films. I had a whole curriculum in mind: learn more about scriptwriting, read about different filmmaking concepts, watch movies and study them while taking notes. I planned a schedule and everything. It started fairly well, but it wasn’t consistent. It just didn’t feel natural.
When this independent film study piqued my interest in reading novels, I decided to become a novelist rather than a screenwriter. I didn’t want to abandon my original screenplay ideas, so I turned them into novels. I noticed that it has taken me much longer to write novels than it did to write screenplays, which raises the question. Why?
There are many factors. Maybe because novels are typically longer and the pages are filled with bulkier paragraphs that I spent more time editing. I found that even though I knew what I wanted to write, I kept getting stuck. As some writers I’ve come across told me, this is part of the process. They even have a name for it: writer’s block, but I call it for what it really is. Procrastination.
It’s not that we run out of ideas of what to write next; it’s the lack of motivation to keep going. I struggled with this so much, and I didn’t know why at the time. But based on the recent study on procrastination, I realized it was because I was instinctively afraid of failure. After all, becoming a novelist isn’t an easy thing to accomplish. Even after publishing, there is no guarantee that the book will be successful.
Just the thought of the long process and the bumps ahead discouraged me from pursuing my ambition of becoming a novelist. This is why I decided to come up with a backup plan, go back to college and earn a certificate to pursue a stable career just in case my dream of becoming a writer doesn’t work out.
Since I thought that developing my own structure wasn’t the answer for me to accomplish my goals, I decided to go back to school and upgrade my secondary education diploma. I first took an online English course that started very well, but I did not stay consistent with it. It was an eight-to twelve-month course, and I didn’t complete every assignment before the deadline. I believed that the lack of due dates on the assignments was what kept me putting off the work.
It was a flexible structure, so I was able to go at my own pace. I thought it was the best option for me, but it didn’t work out. That’s why I decided that upgrading my high school diploma in an in-person classroom setting was a better fit, as the structure is more rigid. I would be more motivated to complete and submit my assignments before the due date. It turned out that I was right. I passed the course and earned my English credit to study in the ES program in college because I had a true desire to learn and the prioritization skills to succeed.
It wasn’t until I enrolled in the ES program that I learned that a flexible structure is beneficial for a positive learning experience. Structure is important if you want to be successful, but it doesn’t have to be rigid. In fact, I learned that a rigid structure causes procrastination, so why did I struggle with it while studying English online and my “personal film school?”
As flexible as the online course was, there was still a deadline. If there had been an extended deadline or no deadline at all, I probably would have finished all of the assignments and completed the online course. As for the “Personal Film School,” it’s possible that I made the structure too rigid or that I simply shifted my interest to novel writing, which brought me to further my education.
I originally thought that a tight structure helps one stay focused. Based on what I’ve learned in the ES program at Sheridan College, the opposite is true. A flexible, structured environment is more beneficial for a person’s learning. I’ve learned this in a theory-based behavioural strategies course, and I can say from my own experience that it’s true. I have also seen it myself in my private tutoring sessions and even with some of the students I support in the educational system.
Students learn more positively while taking frequent breaks. Yes, there is a matter of students taking advantage of the frequent breaks, which is why we typically set timers for them. This brings me back to the first-and-then approach. “First work, then break for five minutes.”
We, as EA’s, often use another approach called “chunking,” which means breaking down a large assignment into manageable steps so the student won’t feel too stressed or overwhelmed. And the prioritization skill set, where, in a flexible environment, they could potentially develop self-discipline and time management.
Time Management Skills: Without prioritization, you will struggle to develop time management skills. When I was in high school, I would often lose focus due to various distractions. This is more common with young students, especially with smart cellular devices. People in general tend to lose focus while trying to complete an important task and spend too much time on their technological devices to no end, leaving too little time to finish the assigned task, which would cause more stress, overwhelm, and anxiety.
Even in College, I found myself staring at my phone or at the wall longer than I intended.
Yes, I believe that frequent breaks are beneficial, but there’s always the question of how long a break should be. The way I see it, the question should be: how long should you stay on task before taking a break to refresh before you go back to work?
The answers may vary, but I found that the Pomodoro technique is another useful strategy I’ve learned in the ES Program. I even did an assignment and presentation on it. For those who may be unfamiliar with the Pomodoro Technique, it is a time-management method that helps you stay focused and more productive.
· You set a timer to work for 25 minutes.
· When the 25-minute timer goes off, you reset the timer for a five-minute break.
· After that, you reset the timer to run the task for another 25 minutes
· Repeat until the task is completed.
I’ve used this technique myself when I did my homework, and it certainly worked, though I wasn’t consistent with using it every time I hit the books. I even noticed some students I supported using the Pomodoro technique, though they tended to go over the 5-minute break.
It is a useful approach, but it’s not always consistent with every student’s ability to work. I do like the idea behind it, which is why I still do it, but with a more flexible method.
· Instead of using a timer, I work as long as my energy efficiency lasts.
· I take a break for as long as I need until I regain energy to keep going.
· Sometimes I work for a long period of time, and sometimes I don’t.
· Sometimes my breaks are long, and sometimes they’re short. It all depends on my energy efficiency and motivation.
After I finished college, I have been using this method with my writing, and it has helped immensely. I have been taking frequent breaks ever since, and I have become a much better writer. I write scenes much faster, and I complete chapters in weeks instead of months.
Support from others: One of the best motivations you could probably get to accomplish your goals is support from other people. Friends, family, teachers, coaches, mentors—whichever you trust will help you succeed. Maybe somebody you know is trying to accomplish the same goal as yours or a similar one.
I don’t think I would have ended up studying the ES program at Sheridan College if it wasn’t for my partner—now fiancé, Tara. Her ambition of becoming an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) motivated me to pursue a career as an EA. We did the academic upgrading course together, and both ended up at college, supporting each other’s academic goals.
Tara and I have been together for over ten years, and she has been a big influencer in getting things done more urgently. If it wasn’t for her, I would probably still procrastinate to no end. Tara is one of the reasons why I don’t put off tasks as I used to. Ever since I have been with her, I have been getting things done much sooner rather than waiting to finish them later.
Even though I was more motivated to write, I was still running in endless circles until I encountered a book coach named Suzy Vadori, who is a published young adult author. She helped me greatly improve my writing, and I have been more consistent with the work I am aiming to publish.
Suzy actually reintroduced me to the Pomodoro Technique, which I started practising with my writing on the 25-minute Timer. I have even done it with other writers on Suzy’s virtual meetings. I’ve gotten a ton of work done in each 25-minute sprint, and I became way more consistent. I ended up not using the timer again and went back to my reinventive version of the technique but on a more measurable scale.
These Tips and Strategies Could Help Students too.
There are modifications for exceptional students, such as breaking large assignments into manageable chunks, double time on tests or deadlines, and other accommodations tailored to their needs. Still, even some “mainstream level” students have a difficult time getting their work done because they, like me, don’t understand the importance of completing assignments.
They haven’t learned prioritization skills, and the educational system doesn’t often cater to their curiosities, interests, or natural skills. They use grades and the fear of failure as motivation for students to succeed, but remember that procrastination is a natural response to repeated failures, so what happens to students when they fail an assignment or test on a subject they have no interest in or developing skills for?
They would either avoid completing the tasks or put them off until the last minute; either outcome could cause anxiety, stress, and overwhelm, ultimately leading to a negative learning experience. That isn’t to say that they won’t be successful in their own learning.
For younger readers, try these examples I’ve mentioned previously. Don’t worry so much about the grades; focus on the benefit of your own learning. Try practicing by following a routine at home.
· Explore your interests while balancing your workload.
· As soon as you walk through the door after you come home from school, find a space where you feel you learn best.
· Prioritize your studying by focusing on the subjects you enjoy or the ones you do best in.
· Complete assignments that are closer to the deadline.
· Take as many breaks as you want for as long as you need. Maybe you can focus on things you truly want to learn during your breaks.
· Try the pomodoro technique: set a timer for 20 or 25 minutes and work nonstop until the timer runs out, then reset the timer for a five-or ten-minute break, reset the timer for 20 or 25 minutes and repeat.
· Seek guidance from a friend, family member or someone you trust to help you along the way.
If you feel these tips are more positive and productive, it will show you are determined to be successful because that is all that matters. At the end of the day, success is measured based on the enjoyment of your learning.
Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination: McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning
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