The art of procrastination

I see no better time to write this post than when I am putting off revising for my final exam this Monday. In fact, we could construct a Logistic regression model to find the longest time interval I can put off studying for – see, revision pays off when you can ‘theory-drop’ into everyday conversation.

Exams are a huge part of education but it always seems like, just when you are told ‘these will be the hardest exams you’ll ever have to do’, they always seem to get more difficult! Only this morning, I sat my 3 hour ‘Generalised Linear Models’ exam and am delighted to say I finished it (hopefully to a decent standard) and for a 3 hour statistics exam, that is an achievement. The most amazing thing was, I was not even stressed. Not a glint of panic in my eye appeared for those 180 minutes and of course, this prevented the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism in the brain that gives you that “blank” feeling when you panic about what you should know and where it’s hidden in your memory.

Looking back on my revision techniques from first year, I really have come a long way. I know exactly how to revise and which methods work best for me, and how to time these in the lead up to exams. One thing I have never been able to shake is procrastination. It can be a like a dark cloud that creeps up on you and disrupts your day but, the best thing I’ve found to help remotivate yourself is setting day-to-day or weekly goals. Throughout revision season, this can help so much if you make targets of topics or questions you want to have worked through for certain dates. It certainly sounds easier said than done, but speaking from experience, it helps so much! Even if you do find yourself getting distracted and end up doing other things (cleaning is a favourite of mine) you will still find time to meet your targets and thus progress in your revision or work. And most importantly, don’t stress about what you could have done.

No matter how much you deviate from the one thing you should be doing, sometimes it takes a bit of doing nothing to remember why you want to do something. I was going to leave you with another all-so-articulate quote, but as a professional procrastinator, I think I’d rather get distracted and leave it to you.

Tell me how you would complete the sentence:

‘Procrastination is to a student…’