The Procrastinators Guide to Christmas Revision. 

Don’t be disheartened! It may be Christmas and you have to revise while everyone else is having fun, but don’t give up on the possibility that you might actually get down to some quality work among all the distractions on offer. Getting started may not be the mountain you think it is!

Here are some top tips from us to help you find your way.

Firstly, recognise what drives procrastination:

If you are like most people, your main driver will probably be a sense of overwhelm based on some very high expectations of how hard you think you will have to work this Christmas. Often this is increased by a belief that you have not worked hard enough up until now and that you must catch up on great swathes of work before you can even start to make progress. This belief is unhelpful even if it happens to be true. This belief will stop you from valuing your efforts and in doing so, will hijack your motivation to even try.

Procrastination and the way we think:

We know if we stop to think about it, that the world doesn’t function like this. It’s us – we have got into a guilt-fuelled mental trap that holds us hostage to a very rigid sense of what ‘must be.’ And yet we know that as humans, we don’t function like this. When we learn a sport or a musical instrument, we know that at first it feels hard. Everything is difficult. It takes time  and effort. And the skill at this stage is to have teachers who don’t challenge us too far, too fast and who make the learning fun. A few months and years down the track, we are effortlessly and unconsciously performing all sorts of activities which took us so much time and effort to achieve in the early stages. Learning is not linear. It speeds up, it slows down, it has peaks and plateaus and is a malleable experience. Sometimes the smallest effort can create a shift that moves us rapidly forward.

How athletes learn to perform:

We do have a much more flexible sense of performance when we think about athletes. We know that their training regimes change over time. We know that they go through cycles of effort and rest and we know that they can deliver their best performances under pressure. We instinctively know that athletes are human and do in fact need work, rest and play. We recognise that they cannot eat, breathe and sleep their training, they need time off. Their recovery and recuperation is built in to their training regimes and is therefore guilt-free. And we know that they use a great deal of psychology in order to get themselves up and running every day when they are training.

Procrastination and Preparation time:

Procrastinators everywhere can learn from this approach. Beginning with very small pieces of work. Even just getting your books out, sorting your notes and tidying your room has immense value, as we know from Steven R Covey’s book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People’. Starting at the beginning and setting yourself up right pays enormous dividends quickly, when you start to perform well because you are organised and know where stuff is. But it also gives you time to just potter around, in your study space, getting used to the whole idea. It gives your unconscious mind time to prepare itself ready for the work it will do. Just remember, anytime getting organised is high value work, because your brain is also organising and categorising your work.