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Just Do It, Don’t Procrastinate
Procrastination means delaying or putting off tasks that are meant to be accomplished unnecessarily. It’s a psychological behavior related to time management. Every time you delay an activity, procrastination becomes reinforced and difficult to eliminate. This happens to be one serious habit that affects students with low self-drive. As such, it reduces their chances of getting to participate, gaining skills and building the courage to handle the demands of the various subjects they take. Procrastination may seem like a fantastic way to avoid doing your work or assignments in high school, but a terrible way to prepare for your future. As they say, you can avoid responsibility, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding responsibility.
In academics, you may experience a nagging form of inaction, procrastination or outright laziness. To overcome these momentary forms of negative behavior, you need something to jumpstart you into action. This could be a thought or a word that triggers your desire to get into action. You can use words of affirmation or a thought that is powerful enough to propel you into the right frame of mind to engage in learning activities with a passion.
As you jumpstart your journey towards academic excellence, you are likely to feel like quitting after a while, when this happens, remind yourself the reasons that prompted you starting the journey. For example, when feeling lazy or uninterested in your academic pursuit, you can remind yourself about the future that you desire.
For good grades, time and efforts, academic excellence is like running a marathon, not a sprint, don’t expect immediate results. Mentally prepare yourself for the academic journey and outcomes you desire to achieve. According to Dale Carnegie, “If you start out going nowhere, you generally will get there.” To jumpstart your journey to impressive grades, work with a goal, the established milestones will keep you mentally focused towards achieving your desired outcome.
Question your actions before taking them. Success doesn’t come easily, therefore, only engage in activities that push you closer to the good grades that you so much desire. Seek assistance from people who have managed to jump start their journey to success and made it. Work with teachers, reliable friends and family to assist you combat self-doubt and put you on the right track when you deviate.
Jumpstart your memory as well, since your memory is the key to getting good grades, don’t take chances with your learning process.
Simplify the learning process, make information easy to understand, retain and retrieve. Process the learnt information in chunks. Associate and create links current and previously learnt information. Finally pay more attention and repeat to master and retrieve information. Successful people have to do the things they don’t like in order to be successful. Focus on what is important. Identify your critical success factors to guide you towards getting better grades.
Success happens when you start and continue working; procrastinators see only experience success in their minds but never get to taste it. By delaying or putting of tasks that are meant to be accomplished, you are only hurting yourself. The best time to start working on it is today not tomorrow. What you do today will shape you tomorrow, not what you will do in future. Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking our complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one.” Rather than delay, break your assignments into step by step manageable tasks.
One African proverb gives as an insight on the consequences of procrastination. Those who fail to prepare for the future that they want should be ready for the future that they get. If you are not tracking your time, it is difficult to determine how efficiently you are using your time. Without proper tracking, you easily fall behind in your studies and procrastinate. Study at least four to six hours a day during the week and eight to ten hours a day on the weekends.
Unfortunately, a lot of students completely underestimate the amount of time needed to study to reinforce the information that was presented in class.
Top Achievers work within the 24 hours that we all have in our days, they maximize their use of time, and they see time as an investment and safeguards time against misuse.
Here are some strategies used by Top Achievers to maximize their time and reduce the temptation to procrastination.
Tackle classroom assignments, tasks, and group work in an organized manner.
Use class time wisely.
Arrive on time for school and/or class every day.
Be well-prepared for class each day.
Works at an appropriate pace, neither too quickly or slowly.
Complete assignments in the time allotted.
Pace your work on long-term assignments.
Set achievable goals with respect to time.
Complete make-up work in a timely fashion.
Top Achievers know that any assignment given to them is an opportunity to build their skills, their confidence and their understating of the subject. To avoid this habit, Top Achievers make up their own rewards, for example they promise themselves something meaningful that will keep them feeling good. They also identify a friend who can apply positive peer pressure to make them work, they identify the consequences of procrastination well in advance and they take appropriate steps to avoid this form of indiscipline
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