It’s about 9:00pm on a March evening. I have a 2500 word Literature Review due in 24 hours. I’ve done all the research. I have journal articles that cover each part of the topic that I’ve read, made notes on, and organised into sections. I’ve even created an outline and colour coded it with each source so I know what to use and when. The problem is I haven’t written a decent sentence. I’m in full-on panic mode which a bad and scary place to be if you are a writer.
My friend, a man who talked me down from just about every panic session I had while writing papers for the final 18 months of my undergrad, is on the phone trying to talk me off my writing ledge…again. He’s calmly reassuring me that I have this. I can write this. He’s even trying to give me writing tips despite never having written a Lit Review in his life or knowing what one is, for that matter. That just sets me off more. I let into him with something close to the following: “This isn’t going to be ok. I have no idea what I am doing. I have never written a literature review in my life! It doesn’t make any sense! How can I have a degree in writing yet NEVER have written one of these things?!?!?” (To increase the accuracy of that quote, please add a specific expletive about every third word.) He should have hung up on me but, being the good friend he is, he calmly let me rant and cry. Maybe having an ocean separating us made it easier to endure.
A large portion of my panic session had little to do with the fact that this was the first literature review that I had written for my Masters programme. I still find them hateful even after writing a few, but they are just another type of writing; so no big deal. It’s academics. You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it. The problem was that I had put off writing it until the last minute. I’m a procrastinator with a specialty in procrastinating writing assignments.
My trusty Merriam Webster Dictionary app defines procrastinate as “to be slow or late about doing something that should be done….to put off intentionally and habitually.” Wikipedia (yes, I’m using it as a source; this is not a university research paper, so sue me!) defines procrastination as “the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to doing more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the ‘last minute’ before the deadline.” California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo)’s Student Academic Services website says that “The procrastinator is often remarkably optimistic about his ability to complete a task on a tight deadline; this is usually accompanied by expressions of reassurance that everything is under control.” Yep, that’s me!
I wouldn’t call myself a chronic procrastinator. I usually don’t have a problem getting things started or finishing them before they should be done. There are times I forget to do something until the last minute, like buying birthday cards, but that’s not procrastination so much as it’s just me forgetting that it takes time for a piece of mail to get from England to the United States. The thing I procrastinate most often, perhaps chronically, is writing assignments. You read that correctly. The girl who loves writing, who has a degree in writing, and who continues to further her education despite saying, over and over, that this is her last degree has put off just about every writing assignment she’s had for school and there have been many.
The Cal Poly site talks about the fact that student procrastination is sometimes backed up by getting a decent grade on an assignment despite it being completed just in the nick of time. It claims that this actually reinforces the behaviour because the student got away with the procrastination. In that case, I’m in big trouble. As a chronic writing assignment procrastinator I have written some stellar papers the night before they were due. In fact, I’ve never gotten a poor or even average grade on anything I’ve written for school (sorry, that is some unintentional boasting). I can basically blame the educational system in two countries for reinforcing my bad habit….but I won’t. I only blame myself.
The truth is, I really wish I didn’t procrastinate the writing thing, especially when it comes to coursework. It’s stressful and sometimes scary. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that this habit will eventually bite me squarely where it hurts. There will be a time when I’m furiously typing away, trying to finish up an assignment and my computer will crash or I’ll discover that a source I’m using is insufficient or I’ll doze off and not finish. Something will happen and my 20+ year run of good procrastination luck will run out. This doesn’t bode well for someone who is in the process of working on a Master’s dissertation and is considering going on to a PhD (Future Topic: Is Education Addictive!). Not to mention the idea that the goal is to have writing be a major part of my profession.
Okay…so I know there’s a problem. Time to make efforts to fix it. I’ve found a couple recent articles that, along with Cal Poly’s website, give some helpful hints on conquering procrastination. There are apparently apps that do things like cut you off from the internet or one very mean one, if you are a writer, named Write Or Die that starts to delete what you’ve written if you pause for too long while writing. Maria Konnikova’s New Yorker article, “Getting Over Procrastination” as well as Cal Poly’s website suggests taking the task a little at a time. Work on something for about 5-10 minutes then do something different. That breaks the assignment up into more digestible parts.
My approach has been something of a mixture of ideas and I did them instinctively (before I started researching this post) because I was beginning to panic about my dissertation which is due in January. This past Monday I woke up and decided I was going to change my schedule. I’ve gotten a bit lazy now that taught courses are completed and I don’t have a job to go to (I’m looking, if anyone in London is hiring). So, instead of my normal routine of waking up late and lounging around drinking tea while maybe researching for my dissertation or applying for jobs I now force myself to get up and out of my little room. I walk down to Starbucks and sit there and work for at least 2 hours.
Being out in public is far less distracting to me. Even with toddlers running around screaming and loud conversations happening at the tables near me, I am less likely to lose focus on my work than if I was in my quiet room, alone. In addition to getting up and working straight away I also signed up for two extra writing groups during the week. It’s the same concept. I’m in public, hence more focused, and I have a stated task–to write or research. One more trick I do is to give myself deadlines. They are self-imposed deadlines with no real consequences if I miss one but it works. This blog actually has a deadline and I treat that deadline as if I have an editor breathing down my neck for a story.
This experiment has only been going on for six days but it has had some fantastic results. I’ve gotten a bunch of research done for the dissertation and I’ve written more (non-dissertation) than I have in a very long time. The late-night/very early morning panic attacks about the dissertation have been minimised. I think I only had one this week. I’m becoming more disciplined and focused. Also, the sense of getting things accomplished and not feeling like I’m under as much pressure is quite rewarding.
I will now point out the bit of irony of this post. It’s a post about procrastination that was written three days before its deadline. Hmmm….maybe my new routine is working!!
References/Sources/Further Reading
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. (2012). Student Academic Services—Procrastination. California Polytechnic University. [online] Available from: http://sas.calpoly.edu/asc/ssl/procrastination.html
Heyden. T. (2014). The much-delayed war on procrastination. BBC News Magazine. [online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29570615?ocid=socialflow_twitter
Konnikova, M. (2014). Getting Over Procrastination. The New Yorker. [online] 22 July. Available from: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/a-procrastination-gene
Wikipedia. (2014). Procrastination. Wikipedia.com. [online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination
On My Mind 