We all are guilty of procrastinating. Be it spending a few more minutes on our phone scrolling through videos, or lying in bed all day unnecessarily refusing to get up, or flipping through our textbook pages when we have tonnes of homework to complete.

At some point of our day, there comes a time where we are not actively doing anything.

I too spend hours looking through shopping websites, or scrolling through the world of Instagram and Facebook while having my to-do-list staring me in the face, waiting for me to complete all my pending tasks.

Procrastination is when we put off our daily task and rather than do them on their allotted time. We push it back. Or when we think that a particular task is way too difficult for us, we become overwhelmed by the complexity of it. Then we get confused about our abilities to do that task. So instead of even trying, we completely put it off until the deadline.

We could also be having a fear of failing in doing that work, due to which we don’t do it at all. It can be any task, an algebra exercise or writing a 500 word essay, we just cannot bring ourselves to complete our work and instead we sit there staring at the walls, ceilings or phone screens.

Another reason why we find ourselves wasting time is due to our unhealthy lifestyles. Most of us have irregular sleeping schedules. The teenagers of today stay up late at night, then wake up early in the morning to go to schools without their giving their bodies the minimum eight hours of required sleep. Because of a tired and restless mind, we have low energy levels that prove to be obstacles in being productive and active.

Let’s look at it this way — if your friend came to you and took your money out of your wallet without your permission, you would be enraged right? But if that friend came to you while you were studying and started telling you a story, you would be fully engrossed in listening to it.

Do you realise what happened? Your friend took your money and you got angry, but when your friend took your time, you most probably did not realise it. We do this to ourselves too. We rob ourselves of our precious, finite amount of time when we are engaged at social media for two hours, looking at nothing in particular, or when we watch a couple of movies in a day, or when, instead of completing our assignments, we roam around our house doing essentially nothing. We fail to realise that time is the greatest asset we have. Without using time well, we can’t really do the things we should be doing. Time will not stop, it will run out, but we would have wasted it in doing nothing of significance.

Act!

You can start being productive with simple and small steps. Sometimes, just getting up from your bed and washing your face can make you feel refreshed and give you the kick to get things done.

Making a cup of coffee, tea or your favourite drink and sitting on your desk can gather the motivation of completing your work. Listing down tasks in the form of a checklist has also proven to help a lot of people.

Many times we think about the things we have to do and are not able to get beyond the thinking part. If we only get up and act on our thoughts, the rest of the work will come easily. Getting yourself into the mindset of ‘doing’ instead of only thinking about it, will benefit a lot.

When we keep thinking about doing a particular task, our mind will get exhausted just by thinking about that task and we never get around to doing it. It also helps to do the hard stuff first so the rest of the tasks will seem less hard and daunting in comparison, and will enable you to complete all the work fast and on time. Otherwise you may find yourself stuck on a single thing, which seems so big and hard that it occupies your mind and renders you useless to complete any other task.

Remember that most fruitful results come to those who act without wasting precious time.

‘A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.’ — Charles Darwin

Make schedules

When you start your day, get into a habit of making a checklist of all the things you want to accomplish for the day. Schedules can help you get organised and effective planning will result in minimum waste of energy and time. They can also be motivating. You will have your most important tasks written out already and this will act as a stimulus for you to act and do your work.

Having your tasks written out can also help to declutter your mind and make things seem less daunting. It will help in overcoming whatever reasons you had for procrastinating and make work easier and less time consuming.

‘Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.’ — Margaret Thatcher

However it should be kept in mind that continuous planning can become an unproductive habit if all you do is make plans and lists. Oftentimes, if you are unable to act on the things you plan, you will be left with notebooks full of goals you never got around to accomplishing. Over-planning can in turn waste time and put you in a dangerous spiral. It is important to manage the schedules you make for yourself. It is also equally important not to overwhelm yourself with plans and strict schedules which will demotivate you and you will not be able to utilise time efficiently.

Give yourself deadlines

When you have successfully settled on a plan for the best and most time effective way to carry out your tasks, set deadlines for yourself. The deadlines should be realistic and achievable. They will become tools of motivation for you and act as a challenge.

And as humans, it is our tendency to rise to challenges given to us and prove ourselves best in any test we are given, realistic deadlines for achievements can be a booster and incentive for us to complete our work on time, without wasting it while procrastinating.

Deadlines prove most effective when they are not too hard on us and are right on the spot of making us sit down and start ‘doing’. You will find that you spend time more efficiently when you give yourself a timeframe in which the task has to be completed, rather than starting off with work without any set deadline.

Tasks which you will start without any deadlines, may end up being unfinished or you may become bored by the complexity or monotonous nature of the task. You may think to yourself ‘I will do it sometime later’, but this ‘sometime’ may never come or may come too late. With a deadline, you will be able to finish the most difficult tasks in a shorter period of time.

Remember, strict deadlines can also turn into incentives and put us into unnecessary pressure. As a result, we may not be able to give our best to our work and we may have to end up redoing the work or starting over, because it does not meet our expectations, resulting in wasted time. Do not give yourself a time crunch. Give yourself a manageable and realistic target.

Reinforcement and rewards

Every morning when you wake up and go straight to wash up instead of scrolling through your social media for one hour; or every time you stop chatting with your friends and sit down to finish your homework, or every time instead of stuffing clothes into your cupboard and putting off cleaning it, you organise it properly, give a small gift reward yourself for using your time in a way which benefits you.

When you spend several days working hard and utilising all time effectively, give yourself a day off as a reward. A reward is motivation to continue this responsible behaviour.

Reinforcement is part of behavioural psychology in which patterns of behaviour are encouraged and established by giving a reward when the behaviour is exhibited. Giving yourself positive reinforcements when you reward yourself with a dinner, movie, or relaxing time, for not wasting time and being productive, will make you look forward to receiving that reward again. And in this way you will become habitual to following schedules, and doing work on time instead of wasting it on useless things.

With all of the steps you will do to manage your time, you will find yourself healthier and happier. You will find time to do the things you like and pursue your hobbies without the fear or tension of all the tasks you have to accomplish. You will be freely able to pursue any of your interests.

You will have time to read your favourite books or play your favourite game. You will have time to plan fun activities while also staying up to date with your student life. And gradually, being efficient with time will become a habit for you resulting in a much more productive and happy you!

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 10th, 2021