Procrastination & how to avoid it. Home edition!

Hey guys, so this was not originally going to be the first blog post. However with everything that’s going on right now I think it’s important to get  some advice on how to handle our “new normal”.  I asked a few students for some advice on how to maintain your sanity and keep focused. These are the tips and advice I was able to put together with their help:

1. Take a shower and get dressed in normal clothes. Don’t stay in your pajamas’s all day. Keeping a routine is the key to keeping your head on straight and starting your day fresh.
2. Pick an area in your home or studio specifically for studying or being productive. The effect of this is that when you’re in this area your brain and your body subconsciously knows that this is your productive space.
3. Don’t study in bed! Your brain connects your bed to sleep which then leads to you getting tired before you’ve gotten anything done.
4. Set up a schedule like you usually would. Make a list of things you need to do. Even the small ones feel good when you can cross them off!
5. If you’re back at home with your family it could get noisy. Listening to music can help you focus. Some people prefer to study while listening to music without lyrics, some people like white noises. Whichever side you fall on you can always find a playlist on YouTube, Spotify etc, that fits and if not just make your own!
6. If you constantly get distracted by social media (like most of us do) there are apps and extensions that block  distracting apps and websites for a period of time so that you can’t go on them to procrastinate!
7. Try to prepare your snacks and drinks before you start studying so that you don’t wander off to the kitchen halfway through never to return again.
8. Prioritize! Try to do the important tasks first, especially if there is a deadline approaching.
9. Finish whatever you can as soon as you can. The more you put stuff  off, the worse and more anxious you may feel.
10. Just do it! Starting is the hardest part. Once you’ve actually started doing what you’ve been putting off, you’ll usually find that it’s not as difficult as you thought it was.

The good thing about these tips is that when everything finally gets back to normal, everyone can still benefit from them. We are all in this together and we should share advice and help each other as much as we can.

Written by Lenifa Priest