Procrastination

What is procrastination?

Description

Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished by a certain deadline. It could be further stated as a habitual or intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite knowing it might have negative consequences.

Procrastination is the same as addiction, it offers temporarily relief and excitement from boring reality. It makes you fool yourself into thinking that a useless task might be more beneficial that an important one (e.g spending unnecessary time preparing your desk instead of actually studying).

You start devising weird excuses such as you will forget the material anyway or the problem is with the material not you.

We're taking a new insight into procrastination which relates it to pain. How? 

First, you look at a certain task and you feel unhappy, your brain's pain centers light up.

Second, you shift your attention to a more pleasing activity. 

Third, this causes you to feel better at least temporarily. 

Even though this is a temporary avoidance it can lead into a long term habitual avoidance which will make it even more painful to do that task (e.g avoiding studying a lot will make the task even more painful) 

What is a habit?

When you first start doing something such as parallel parking for example your brain goes into hyper alert mode, the huge flow of data and information makes it seem impossible at the start, but after you've chunked it you start performing it easily in a mode called Zombie mode. You start doing it semi aware of a certain key facts without clogging yourself with all the data, you start doing it naturally (e.g think of when you had started to learn how to ride a bike vs after you've mastered it). 

Habit is an energy saver for us, it allows us to free our minds for other type of activities. You go into that zombie mode far a lot more than you think and that's the point of habit, you don't have to think in a focused manner to do it. 

Habits can be good or bad and they can be short or long.

4 parts of habit:

1. The cue: this is the trigger than launches you into zombie mode.
2. The routine: this is the zombie mode. The habitual response that your brain does after receiving the cue. 
3. The reward: every habit develops and continues because it rewards us, which is why procrastination is easy to develop as it rewards us quickly and easily. 
4. The belief: habits have power because of your belief in them. 
   To change a habit, you'll need to change your underlying belief.

Tackling procrastination

Pomodoro

Pomodoro technique is a 25 minutes session of uninterrupted focus then rewarding yourself after it. You set a timer for 25 minutes and close your phone and isolate yourself then you just start the task, then you reward yourself after it however you please.

Process vs product

It's perfectly normal to have negative feelings when you start studying even if it's a subject that you like. How you handle these feelings is what matters. For example, non-procrastinators tell themselves to stop wasting wasting and that once they got going they will start to enjoy it. And that's focusing on the process not the product. 

Process means the flow of time and the habits and actions associated with the flow of time (e.g I'll spend 20 minutes working)

Product is an outcome (e.g task that needs to be finished).

To avoid procrastination you should avoid focusing on the product and focus on the process instead. Process are related to simple habits, habits that allow you to complete the unpleasant task.

For example, you keep delaying an assignment because you convince yourself that it can be done later and that it is not so hard, but deep down you know that it's not that easy. You have to avoid focusing on the product which is finishing the assignment as it is what triggers the pain and causes you to procrastinate. Instead, you should focus on the process, the small chunks of time you need over days to finish this assignment. It doesn't matter whether you finish the assignment in one session or not, what matters is focusing for a short period of time (the process). You can use Pomodoro to focus on a process NOT completing a task.

The point is that your zombie likes processes as it marches mindlessly along, so it's easier to enlist the friendly zombie habit to help with process than to help with a product. Instead of focusing on whether you're close to finishing, allow yourself to relax with the flow of the process.

Changing a habit (procrastination) 

As aforementioned habits compose of 4 aspects:

1- Cue: you need to know what triggers your procrastination. The issue with procrastination is that it's an automatic habit so you start doing it without knowing. Cues fall into 4 categories: 

• Location
• Time
• How you feel
• Reactions 

Best way to avoid cue triggers is closing your cellphone and using Pomodoro. 

2-Routine: Instead of studying, you often diverse your attention into something else. The cue automatically triggers the routine, so this is where you have to actively focus to rewire your habit. Developing a new ritual might be helpful such as finding a new quiet place or leaving your phone in another room. 

3-Rewards: You procrastinate because you obtain a good feeling for a short while. You need to substitute that emotional feeling with something else. Maybe think about it as a challenge or enjoy the slight feeling of satisfaction after finishing the task. Of course the bigger the task, the bigger the reward. Rewards are very important as they create neurological cravings in your mind. It helps to add a new reward to overcome previous cravings. After a while your brain starts to expect this reward which leads to rewiring. Delay rewards until you finish the task, don't fool yourself into rewarding yourself before you are done.

4-The Belief: It's the most important part of changing your procrastination habit. You may find changing the habit stressful and that makes you fall back into more comfortable habits. You have to keep believing that you can change and that your plan will work.

Part of what can underpin your belief is to develop a new community. Hang out with classmates who may have that can-do philosophy that you too want to develop. Developing and encouraging culture with like-minded friends can help us remember the values that in moments of weakness, we tend to forget.

Writing a list

Write a weekly list of tasks that you need to accomplish in the week, then start writing a daily list each day of what you can accomplish in that day. Writing the daily list in the evening of the day before helps your subconscious to figure out how to accomplish it. If you don't write down a list, this take slots of your working memory, but once you write them down, you free your memory for more important stuff. 

Try to make your goals process oriented if the time allows. You can always use Pomodoro to change product oriented tasks into process oriented.

You need to mix your learning with other tasks, preferably tasks that requires physical action as that switches your mind to the diffused mode. 

Take notes in your planner about what methods work and what don't. Which tasks that you've managed to accomplish and which you couldn't as this helps you gain experience on what can be realistically achieved. Avoid overfilling your task lists, as that gives opposite results.

It's very important to plan your quitting time as it is to plan your working time. You need to maintain a healthy leisure time.

Eat your frogs first

Starting your day with working on the most important and unpleasant tasks first. Just one Pomodoro as soon as you wake up can be really effective

Tips

-Visualizing things you're trying to remember makes it easier to recall. Saying it aloud makes it easier to remember. Trying to smell or feel it, makes the memory easier to remember. Using any of your senses whilst trying to remember something makes it easier to recall that memory. Doing all of this gives more neural hooks that makes it easier to store that info into the long term memory. 

-Grouping the material into a simplified meaningful group. For example, you're trying to learn the capital of Estonia, Netherlands and Denmark which are Talin, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. You can group them into TAC which is the same pronunciation as TUC (the biscuit). Visualizing, feeling, tasting and hearing the biscuit can make you engrave it into your memory much easier.

                                                   

-Try to associate numbers with something that you relate to. For example a relative's date of birth can be the year you're trying to memorize. 1.2 minutes or 72 seconds is the average time for 100m swim. Associating any fact to your number to makes it easier to memorize that number.

Lady Luck favors the one who tries.