Beating Procrastination

This week, I will be taking my end of semester final exams. School has been so hectic in the closing weeks of this semester; I have had endless tests and assignments and other odds and ends to finish before the semester wraps up. However, with the exception of one paper¹, I have nothing to do except to study for all of my final exams. I have an exam for each of my classes, two of which are back to back on the first exam day! If I make it through that first day it will be a miracle, especially as one of my exams that day is math and I hate math.

Obviously, I’ve been spending this weekend organizing my notes, going through old tests/quizzes, making study guides, and all that good stuff that is associated with studying and revising. However, I keep getting sidetracked and end up procrastinating from studying far more than I would like to, or in some cases, can afford to! The only thing that has really worked for me in beating procrastination is being pressed for time. I am good with managing my time when it comes to writing papers, but when it comes to studying, I find it far more difficult to sit down and totally focus as I revise. With a paper, you always know when you are finished, but with studying, it’s so hard to tell when you have studied “enough” to do well on the exam!

I don’t really have any tried and true methods for beating procrastination when studying. Sometimes I’ll draft a schedule of all the things I have to do and stick to it, with mixed results. More often than not though, I end up half-studying, half-procrastinating, and hope for the best when exam time rolls around. That is definitely not something I can keep doing; the risks are far too high!

Question of the Week: What methods do you use to beat procrastination? What have you found is the most successful way for you to study?

1. I have a paper for one of my classes that isn’t due until the last day of finals. While that sounds good in theory, it’s actually a huge pain, because this paper was meant to be assigned two or three weeks ago, but because of my professor’s inability to organize and assign papers on time, I now have to write this paper in addition to study for my finals when I could have written this paper two weeks ago. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.