How to Beat Dissertation Procrastination: Tips for UK Students

Procrastination is something that everyone does. It’s the sort of New Year’s resolution where you are happy with the plans you had made, but you were procrastinating doing the actual task. You need to understand why you procrastinate and focus on understanding why.

Major Tips To Manage Procrastination

Stop Telling yourself 

It would be best if you stopped calling yourself a procrastinator stop telling people that you are someone who procrastinates a lot. Because that reinforces that this is a fundamental part of who you are.

This is just like a bad habit that’s so ingrained or maybe you see it as a personality flaw or that you are, and you know badly disciplined or unmotivated or any of these things that they are somehow chronically so everybody procrastinates so it makes no sense to call yourselves a procrastinator. 

You are also a task-doer because you are in academics, which means you have achieved a whole bunch of things in your life. You are also someone who completes tasks.

However, when you focus on telling yourselves, that you are someone who procrastinates, then you just really reinforce that in your head and make it so much harder to deal with.

Because if it’s a personal flaw then you’re going to have to take Massive Action to change that if it’s a personality trait, you probably can’t even change it at all.  Where in reality it’s just a series of behaviours if anything is a habit and you can modify habits, you can shift things a bit you can make it feel easier. 

Reason for Procrastination

The reason is really simple. you procrastinate as you are avoiding emotions that you anticipate you will experience when you do that task. 

Commonly procrastinated in academics

When you have a piece of writing to do, 

• You think it’s going to be difficult
• You not sure where you’re going to start
• You think you’re bad at writing
• You think you haven’t got time to do it
• You think, it’s not a fun thing

In these cases, you are only anticipating that when you do it, you’re going to feel confused, you’re going to feel unclear, and maybe you’re going to feel guilty because you should have done it before, your self-doubts cost you with these negative feelings. If you think a task is going to induce them, then you put off doing it.

Avoiding emotions

When you procrastinate, you avoid emotions and this changes everything.

• Procrastination is not a fatal flaw
• You are not missing motivation
• You are not missing self-discipline
• You are not Lazy

You are just avoiding an emotion that you don’t like, even knowing that can change your relationship with procrastination.

Because you stop beating yourself up about it quite so much and instead focus on what you can do about it.

Stop Procrastinating

You make it simple, just stop and say that you are procrastinating and do that with compassion. 

So keep in mind, 

• Don’t say that I’m procrastinating, I always do
• Don’t say, I’m so useless I’m never going to get this done
• Don’t say, I’m going to have to do twice as much tomorrow
• Say, I’ve noticed that I procrastinate and I will get really specific
• Say, I’ve noticed that I am doing other things instead of prioritizing the work
• Say, actually, there is nothing wrong with doing other things. However, I will keep the secondary thing aside like scrolling social media sites or feeling this work is harder than the other one, and prefer to do that

Ask questions to yourself

• How am I anticipating feeling when I do this task
• Why am I procrastinating now

Choose your work

• You get to choose your thoughts and feelings and don’t have to accept the ones that just float to the surface.
• You can choose the ones you spend more time thinking about that I should have done this before.
• The task may be boring, but that is essential, hence you should think that I am going to make it into a game with some music and beverages, which will make you feel less boring
• You can choose to reduce the complexity by simplifying that in your mind

Answer the difficult Question for yourselves 

What made you think you could have an academic career without doing something difficult and without doing something boring

• Think this is never going to be difficult or boring
• Think about the process of research and the output that is going to give
• Think you have to wait for the time when it feels easy and exciting

Conclusion

You need to first accept that ‘Yes, I procrastinate’, to beat that. However, you have to just tell yourself, the task is going to be difficult, but I am capable of doing difficult things, I am willing to be bored for a while. By following these principles, you can manage procrastination.

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