My procrastinating will be the death of me, I swear. Being a university student with this problem is very VERY bad, while I am not failing I know I can do better if I just gave myself more time but for some reason I don’t. I always leave things to the last minute and it fucking sucks.
Yes, I am aware that procrastination can be due to mental health (like ADHD) and I am pretty sure mine is because of that but I’ve tried stimulants and they did not work (they actually gave me massive mood swings). I believe that I can tame this problem by changing my behaviour and building good habits but I don’t know how. Do you have experience with procrastination? Any tips you can share to help me deal with it?
I always knew my procrastination was a problem (I beat myself up over it constantly) but Spring/Summer term has opened my eyes to just how bad it actually is. This term is incredibly accelerated (13 weeks condensed down to only 13 days) which means procrastinating hits even harder. I am keeping my head above water but I know if I don’t figure something out soon I’ll just sink into despair. My procrastinating is hitting my self-esteem more than it is hitting my grades, if that makes sense. I am being realistic with myself, 100-200 level courses aren’t a big deal so if I don't get an A I won’t beat myself over it, but I would prefer if my bad habits didn’t carry on to higher level classes (300-400) where masters/PhD programs will be looking at.
I do want to end my undergrad on a high note so might as well start now. Thankfully my professors are pretty accommodating so far but that can only do so much, you know what I mean?
I had similar issues, I started pre-crastinating.
By that I mean artificial deadlines that I set for myself (I need to get this assignment done 1-3 days before it's due so I have time to take a quick glance at it right before I hand it in). These were hard deadlines that I pulled all-nighters for. I didn't actually change any habits to become a model student, I just changed the order in which I did unhealthy things.
This eventually lead to me being able to get into the habit of breaking up homework into doing x amount of problems per night, like the top students in my class usually did.
For final projects with less discrete milestones than answering some problems, I still found it difficult and never got used to that. I still pulled all-nighters but aimed my fake due date to a week before, and made it a bit softer so it was okay to sleep if I was more than half done.
I raised my grades from barely passing to decent student. Never got to A+ student but I think was getting there.
I used to never stick to to-do lists, and I still don't like them. I don't like the obligation and feeling like a failure when it's left not completed. I have to do stuff as it comes to me, or know I'm setting out a block of time to do it later that day.