On getting over a procrastination hill

Everyone has been there. You're sitting at an overcrowded desk, 3 half-empty coffee/tea mugs about to fall off the side, and the mountain of work seems to only keep loading up.

And what do you do?

You ignore it and have a nap - because that seems like the most feasible thing to do. Only to wake up in an hour or so feeling too guilty to even do the work that you need to do. And so the cycle continues.

So how do you break out of this cycle?

Breaking out of the cycle of lack-of-motivation is always a punch in the gut because you have to come to terms with the amount of work that is actually there - and it's normally A LOT.

Depending on how long you've been avoiding everything you could hours or even days of work that needs to be done - and this can be confronting.

Start Small

If you're anything like me when you're stressed your desk/room gets most of the emotion taken out on it. Start small. Clean your room, tidy your desk. I know this might seem like cleaning procrastination (it's a real thing I swear, I've colour coded my books 3 times this week) but a tidy desk = a tidy mind. Everything seems more approachable when you have a clean surface and a blank slate to start with.

Next, prioritise your work. With your freshly cleaned area, you can now tackle that mountain of work - but how much of this do you actually have to do?

I often get it in my head that things need to be done that are actually totally useless - Do I really need to edit that article again when I've already done it 5 times? how about colour coding a study text that I actually already fully comprehend?

Sort through your work - write a to-do list of everything - and cull it.

You have to be brutally honest with yourself for this step to work but I've found it can cut that workload in half - even if it means you're just saying hey, this really isn't needed till another fortnight away. You can figure out what you need to get done in the next day or two and focus on that.

Once you've prioritised and culled that list, guess what? we're going to prioritise a bit more.

For this bit I like to grab out some trusty highlighters and colour code:

Red: Holy shit this is due tonight or is already over-due - these ones I know need to be tackled ASAP!

Orange: This is for the ones that are due tomorrow or in the next couple of days, so once I get those red ones done, I'm most likely going to be doing an over-nighter to try and get a head start on these so I don't feel like gauging my eyes out tomorrow!

Yellow: These ones are those that I've already started but they definitely don't need too much work but are due soon, so I'll set aside an hour or two to get through these and finalise anything.

Green: This is for the ones that are ages away - most likely a big project that you're nipping away at, these ones shouldn’t be on your final culled list!

Once you've got a lovely sunrise aesthetic happening on your to-do list it's time to make a coffee (or a lovely tea whatever tickles your fancy), grab a bottle of water, pop on your glasses, chuck on a podcast/some banging tunes and get to work!

Work from the Red through to the Orange in those first days and you now have a handy list of everything that needs to be done over the next week or so - make sure to add in any new projects/tasks that come up and keep sticking to your handy list :)

Make sure to have breaks and go outside, socialise and smile - being burnt out is only going to lead to another procrastination slump!

Good luck - I might actually go and do my chemistry assignment now!

Lots of love

M xx