Help, I'm procrastinating!

You're spending your precious study time watching television, reading stuff on the internet and/or drink your fifth coffee just to avoid studying? And it doesn't feel good at all, because you're feeling guilty for doing nothing productive? Cleaning the litter box of your cat seems incredibly attractive all of a sudden? This, my friends, is procrastination: the student's worst enemy.

I'm one of these people that are procrastinating until the very end of a deadline, and that's a horrible trait to have. You basically just keep doing things that are kind-of-fun instead of doing what you're supposed to do. And the guilt doesn't even let you enjoy this. I often look at the clock and say to myself: "the next full hour, you start studying. And you will be studying for hours until you know just everything!". And then, after spending some time doing "fun" stuff, I look at my clock again; it's five minutes past full hour. And I say to myself: "okay, the next full hour will be the start of your studying marathon. This time for real!". And you know what? Nothing happens. Nothing!

However, yesterday I read an article on HackCollege named "Understanding Procrastination". It basically says that the cure for procrastination is to simply understand procrastination. The author says that we tend to spend our time doing everything but studying because our brain wants us to be happy and/or entertained now, and not after studying vocabulary for hours.

But, according to the article, you can trick your brain by visualizing your future success on a test. The good feeling you have when you get a good grade is much better than the things we suddenly want to do instead of studying. And this is something our brain has to understand. With a positive attitude it's possible to reach the goal of a good grade. I think the author describes it best with these wise words: "just know that you get out what you put in". With the future positive feeling in your mind, textbooks and worksheets won't look that mean and evil anymore. This doesn't mean that studying for hours will be suddenly possible; rewarding yourself after mastering a chunk of study content is important too and will get you motivated though.

It sounds too simple, I know, but today I was more productive than the whole past week. I also don't feel that scared of our assessment anymore. Maybe HackCollege's article will help some of you as well -- even it is just by lessening your fear.