– Oh, now I’m going to study, a good productive day…
– But it is the last episode of Falcon & The Winter Soldier out? And do they fight with super soldiers?
Oh well, come on, it lasts 40 minutes, in the end, it certainly does not change my day, I shoot it, and then immediately afterward it goes under for exams.
* 6 hours, 4 episodes of lol, 12 online squabbles, and 27 YouTube videos about watches later *
Damn, it’s dinner time, in the end, I couldn’t study… Oh well, in the end, one day less makes no difference in the long run. No problem, I’ll break tomorrow! I could also take it forward already tonight at least a little…
What do you say? Does it happen to you too?
Well, well, and think that this mechanism is just one of the many that can make you waste time instead of studying… there are 6 different ones.
Today, in this article, let’s find out how they work… and how to defeat them!
It happens to everyone, among other things, not just to students: it also happens to me with work… if I didn’t know myself well and didn’t know these mechanisms like the back of my hand I would be the king of wasting time, and in reality, I was for years.
Let’s list the study time-wasting mechanisms, put them into practice, and see a tip to keep each of them at bay!
The Physiological Reason
Therefore, the first opponent to your productivity, the first reason why you waste time instead of studying can only be the total fooling around, the pure one, the one that is not even procrastination but your own physiological desire to do nothing for a while, of loosening up on the sofa and not think about studying.
Now, the first mistake that can be made is to think that fooling around can be completely eliminated from our lives, defeated, and banished.
This is not the case, because, joking aside, to disconnect for a while is a physiological need.
What can be done is not to suppress it, therefore, but to control it, always leaving a way and time for it to vent. The more we tend to repress it, the more it will turn up at the wrong, overbearing moment to ruin our plans.
How then? Provide at least one day a week of a total break from studying (or two half days) and at least two moments a day, every day, of free relaxation. In addition, apply the famous internal micro-pauses to study sessions, the Pomodoro technique, and so on. Also, you could probably use the write my paper help from a professional service also.
Personally, as moments of total daily relaxation, I choose the lunch break and the evening after dinner, because I find they fit well with my way of life and that of many. Moreover, they are also the moments in which physiologically one studies worse for the influences of digestion and circadian rhythms, so it is perfect.
The more constant we are in leaving these moments, perhaps even holding them with a watch to make sure they don’t stretch too much, the less we will feel about fooling around when it’s not the case. We will have already abundantly vented this need. This is why the play-break is to be considered an element in all respects part of the study system.
Organizing the messing around, getting to know it, respecting it, and letting it vent where and how it cannot damage our studio: this is the first secret!
Procrastination
Procrastination proper is the act of putting off something we should be doing until later. In this case, the study.
Replace what we should be doing with anything else, build excuses after excuses to postpone, and avoid starting to get serious.
It might seem similar to total fooling around but there is a subtle but profound difference: the urge to fool around, as I understand it, comes from an internal desire, from a need for relaxation and recreation, and procrastination comes from external pressure, it comes from the resistance towards the activity that we have to start, which is why it is much heavier and difficult to defeat.
It is a real plague of humanity!
But here I want to talk about a particular form of procrastination, the one that originates, paradoxically, from the excess of freedom, from disorganization, from… free time, too.
Have you ever noticed that often the freest days, those in which you have no commitments, are also the most difficult to manage, and the ones that most easily lead to procrastination?
Here, the reason is that the real problem with to-dos and procrastination is the moment of departure, the start, and the construction of a work rhythm. Once you get into the rhythm, maintaining it is far easier, far less expensive, and requires far less willpower. The initial resistance is the tremendous one to overcome.
The Constant Distractions
The third reason that makes you waste time during the study is precisely the bombardment of stimuli that interrupts and continually distracts you.
Notifications, suspicious smartphone vibrations, the notification that a new ADC video has come out, people calling you, dogs barking, and everything in between.
Here the advice is very simple: minimalism. Reduce stimuli instead of trying to resist them. Throw away the chocolate instead of trying to convince yourself to eat boiled fennel.
Around you when you study there must be the space pneumatic vacuum, just what you need to study the single topic you have to deal with, nothing else.
The cell phone is the ultimate distraction black hole – keep it in airplane mode where you can’t see or reach it. This is fundamental.
Conclusion
At this point here we are, I just have to open the abyss of your waste of time: write to me and tell me how you lose or have wasted time instead of studying, your most absurd stories and how, hopefully, you managed to recover!