How many times have you woken up with the best intentions
to be your most productive self?
To smash that assignment, finish your exam notes, eat well, drink
all the water and get nine hours of sleep.
But in reality for me, and for a whole heap of other people,
every day is a constant fight against the temptation to procrastinate.
You know the feeling, you've got a massive exam
or a deadline approaching and you've been staring
at a blank Word document for ages.
So, you decide to watch that new music video
and then you decide to just watch a quick Louis Theroux vid
and then suddenly it's 1 A.M. and you're watching someone talk
about their addiction to eating toilet paper.
Not only is procrastinating frustrating, experts reckon it can cause
higher levels of stress and lower well-being.
Plus it often leads to having to pull an all-nighter to get things done.
So why do we do it?
And are there ways to train ourselves not to?
To find out I decided to ask an expert on the human brain.
Basically our brain likes to trick us into doing the easiest things
and you know it's difficult to motivate ourselves to do
these things that are further away in time.
Often getting started is the hardest part.
It might be that you don't even know where to begin,
or the fear of failure,
or just as a way of avoiding having to do an unpleasant task.
See, basically from an evolutionary point of view
humans are wired to think about the now in order to survive.
Feeling hungry? Eat! Tired? Sleep. Scared? Run away.
Overwhelmed? Take a step back.
Our brains haven't really changed in terms of evolution
since we were cavemen so we still have that real urge to get those rewards.
That's all well and good but what can we do to tackle the problem?
I am a big fan of myself making lists
and that sort of chunks your tasks into small, obtainable
things that you have to do
and on my lists I always write the first thing is something
that I've done already so I get to tick it off
and I'm like yes, that's like the reward, that's the dopamine.
There's a whole bunch of other tips and tricks that can help too!
Set manageable goals.
Often we put off the task at hand because it just seems
way too overwhelming, so break it up into more achievable steps.
Rather than saying I'll study maths today, say I'll study chapter three today.
Then the task is clear, attainable and much less intimidating.
But it can be tricky to motivate yourself to start a task that
you know is going to take ages.
So, aim for progress not perfection.
Sometimes the roadblock to starting is caring too much
but putting something off because you're scared
it's not going to be perfect is just cutting into your precious time.
So, get started. You can always go back over things once
you've laid down a base to work from.
One tried and tested way to get cracking is the Pomodoro method.
No, unfortunately that doesn't mean making buckets of pasta
before you do your work. I know sad.
It's actually named after a timer in the shape of a tomato.
It basically involves breaking up a task into manageable,
timed chunks with regular breaks.
Set your timer to 25 minutes and get working.
When the timer goes off, you can take a five-minute break.
You'll probably be amazed at how much you get done
And might even find yourself on a roll and not wanting
to stop once the timer goes off.
After every four Pomodoros, you can take a longer break.
Maybe read a book, do some exercise, play with your pet,
or yes I guess you could make that pasta now.
Try to avoid a two hour nap though!
And finally, don't be too hard on yourself.
Some days you won't get as much done as you had hoped,
but forgiving yourself has been shown to be more helpful
than beating yourself up over procrastinating.
Tell yourself it's okay and you can try again tomorrow.
When you get stressed that actually impacts your ability to learn
and to think about what you're doing so you're better off
you know blank slate the next day and sitting down
and being like right okay I'm gonna really do it this time.
The more you practice staying focused and getting stuff done
the easier it'll get.