It’s a vicious cycle. It goes something like this. You get work assigned, whether it be homework, an essay to write, a presentation to prepare, etc. You delay that work, then with maybe a week, a day, or even an hour left you begin to panic and finally begin working. You finish barely on time, a little behind schedule, or most likely way behind schedule. And not just that, the finished product is not something you’re proud of. In fact, you hate it, you hate it so much you now hate yourself. You’re frustrated that you could have started a week, a day, or even an hour ago and made something so much better, something perfect. But you fail to realize the steps that led to this unfortunate outcome, so at the next assignment, your lessons are only temporary. Let’s say you grind through the assignment and make very good progress early on. Good. But now you’re tired. You’re not used to this and you feel comfortable with the progress you’ve already made. Maybe it’s time to take a break. Yes. A break would be nice. Let’s take this week off, this day off, or maybe just this hour off. That was nice. Very nice. You know what, let’s take just one more week off, just one more day off, or maybe just even one more hour off. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. You’re back where you started. “Congrats” says the procrastination monkey.

I’m actually best friends with the procrastination monkey. He makes frequent visits. Most recent of which was on this presentation I had for my internship. The task was simple but not easy which allowed my mind to get ahead of itself. I evaluated it as easy and looked for something harder, something that was more professional, beyond the scope of a high school student. Foolish me.

I was sent down a never ending rabbit hole. I tried to find something that would match the lab’s caliber. But I could never truly understand something like that. So as I continued to read what I could not make sense of, the stress began to build and build. And soon, as expected, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was lost.

So the deadline came closer and closer. Until two days after. I scrambled to get my stuff together. I stayed up late, throwing what I had onto some google slides, trying to show my mentor that I had been working the whole time.

I failed. Unable to complete the presentation on time, I moved it to the week after to finish it and feel more confident. I am actually still currently working on it and I am definitely making more progress now that I have a better direction.

So how do you escape this cycle of procrastination? I think it starts with crafting realistic goals. I used to create daily goals or to-do lists so I can plan out what I need to do for the day. What I realized though is that these plans were not realistic. I would overbook myself, trying to squeeze in as much work as I could into one day. That would cause me to get backed up, stressed even over the work that begins to stockpile as I schedule more work than I get through. To solve this, I have moved to weekly goals. I have found this to be much more manageable as mapping out what needs to be done for the week enables me to chip away at those things whenever I have freetime as the week progresses. This way I can get ahead on work on some days so on nights when I have a cross country meet or a dinner planned, I don’t feel behind on work, having already completed most of it the night prior.

I also think escaping procrastination requires you to be honest with yourself. Adding on to what I talked about in the previous paragraph, you need to be realistic at what you can accomplish. I often try to cram in a bunch of work on one day to make up for the time I lost due to procrastination earlier in the week, but this only exacerbates the problem. Sure I might get through let’s say two hours of work which might be much more than I had done the day before, but now I’m burned out. The burn out lasts long into the night, typically ruining my sleep schedule as I’d stay up on my phone trying to recuperate. Overcoming that frustration that originates from the time you lost is key. You can’t beat yourself up over it and, as a result, equate overworking yourself to the only path of redemption.

I say “I think” a lot here in my explanation of how to escape the cycle of procrastination because I myself am not sure if this is the way out. These tips are what I have employed over the past couple weeks and it has worked so far, but with school now starting, only time will tell if these strategies hold up. I give procrastination a 0/10 (not a huge fan).