Early Bird Gets the Worm (Bella)

Today I am here to share with you all the wonder that is starting your work as soon as possible.

Actually, maybe I’ll rephrase that – as soon as you get home from uni on the day you receive it! The meaning of the word ‘possible’ can be bent a little bit to mean “just after I check Facebook… there might be a new post in Cool Dog Group… I can’t POSSIBLY start until I’ve checked… ooh memes…” and before you know it, the evening has disappeared, and you will have to wait until tomorrow to do the work.

Of course, at uni, with the huge amount of work crammed into 12 short weeks, it can seem that if you stop working to blink, you’re behind (this is only a slight exaggeration – you probably have time to blink, but stare into the distance for 30 seconds, and it’s a different story). So, the effect of putting things off is huge! Yes, you’ll have to do it tomorrow, along with the work you receive tomorrow, and prep for the next day.

While waiting for my Bachelor’s degree, I have given myself a few titles, which include but are not limited to: Honours in Coffee Drinking, Master of Falling Over on Public Transport (with style) and a PhD in Procrastination. I know how hard it can be to drag yourself away from a screen to be productive! It’s a confusing state; you want to be productive, but you feel like you just can’t. Hmm, study? I haven’t cleaned out my sock drawer in a while, let’s do that!

Us humans respond to motivation, but with things coming very easily to many people in the modern world (like food, water and shelter), we need to find the right thing to motivate us. It could be something positive, such as rewarding yourself with a walk (wait… you don’t just wear activewear to uni!? You exercise in that stuff!?), or an episode of your favourite TV show (bonus points if you’re studying a language and watch the show in that language). I find that one other type of motivation works for me: negative reinforcement.

Say I’m feeling stressed about uni (read: 90% of the time). Stress for the cave men and women came from the struggle to stay alive and find food; for us lucky ones in the modern age, it is usually something mental we stress about. I realised that putting off tasks was not helping my stress levels. The obvious way to alleviate this stress was to get started. I am quite the perfectionist, and we perfectionists can be paradoxical sometimes: putting off starting something because we are scared it won’t be perfect. I’m sure many people can relate to this, and the secret to overcoming the procrastination associated with perfectionism is reversing your thinking. Change your thoughts to: “okay, so I’m starting this early – that means, I’ll have plenty of time to make it perfect, and if I don’t like what I start with, I’ll have plenty of time to change it!”

A good example I’ve used this and it has worked is with my Psychology lab reports. We do two Psychology subjects for our major this semester, and each has two assignments: the one lab report in Part 1 and Part 2.

Dr. Procrastination over here decided to start the first part of each lab report the Friday before it was due. They were due early on Wednesday mornings (so really Tuesday night, just in case of potential Turnitin issues), which was really Mondays for me as I worked on Tuesday nights after being at uni all day. So, I was so stressed about getting them done that I didn’t have as much time to make revisions as I would have liked, sometimes the work seemed more than I had thought, and I wasn’t doing my best writing as I wasn’t relaxed! Recipe for disaster. I’m lucky that I did reasonably well, considering – but I wanted to do better!

So, for Part 2, I started right away. I used my ‘changed thinking’ approach and felt so much more confident as well as happy with my writing. I was a bit of a nerd back in the high school days, and used to do my work the day I got it – if not straight after school before I left to go home (to avoid procrastination).I was horrified when my Year 9 comrades would start the work (gasp!) the night before. At uni, a few days before is really equivalent to the night before, as there is so much more to do per assignment… so why was I doing this to myself when it wasn’t my natural state?

So, fingers crossed for my results for my second round of Psychology assignments. However, whatever the outcome, I know I certainly did my best, and most importantly: gave myself time to do my best.

Coming up next for me is a Staff-Student Liaison meeting for Psychology, which should be super interesting! I have a presentation for French 7, and I’ll get working on my final piece for Creative Nonfiction, now that I’ve (finally) decided on a good story to report.

What study tips work best for you?

Best wishes for the rest of Week 8,

Bella 🙂