How to Beat Procrastination: Practical Strategies Every Student Can Use
Procrastination is one of the biggest obstacles that’s sneaky, persistent, and often disguised as “I’ll start in a few minutes.” But while procrastination feels like a motivation problem, it’s really a management problem: managing your time, your emotions, and your environment.
With the right strategies, you can break the cycle and build habits that help you stay focused and productive.
Why We Procrastinate
Understanding and being conscious of why you procrastinate is the first step to controlling it. How many of these reasons seem familiar:
· Overwhelmed (“This assignment is huge!”)
· Perfectionism (“What if it’s not good enough?”)
· Lack of clarity (“Where do I even start?”)
· Distractions (hello phone!)
· Low motivation or energy
The good news is that all these barriers can be managed and you can choose strategies that directly address what is stopping you from getting your work and revision completed.
1. Break Tasks Into Smaller Steps
Procrastination thrives when tasks feel too big. If you’re about to start revising English Literature, that’s a huge task! The trick is to chunk any task into smaller parts. Choose the topic you are going to study; the more specific you can be the better. Instead of trying to revise ‘Animal Farm’ for instance, choose something more focussed like a chapter, character or theme. Then break it down further, perhaps read a page, write a summary or look for three key quotes to write down. Once you’ve got a small and manageable step, you’re ready to make a start.
2. Use the Pomodoro Technique
A simple but powerful time-management method which I’ve written about before. Once you have your short, focussed steps the Pomodoro Technique gives you a structured timeframe to get the task done by working for short bursts with regular breaks.
1. Work for 25 minutes
2. Take a 5-minute break
3. After 4 cycles, take a longer break (15–30 mins)
You can adapt this to work for you and the time you have available but try to stick to the core concept: a sustained period of work with a short break in between. Aiming to revise for several hours in a row is daunting, overwhelming, and rarely productive. Even if you are planning on spending a day revising, use the ‘cycles’ of work with longer breaks to chunk up your revision. It helps to avoid burnout and gives easy, doable goals.
3. Create a Dedicated Study Environment
Again, another topic that I’ve written about in detail before but your surroundings matter more than you think. You need a quiet and dedicated spot which can be achieved more easily than you think! The main goal here is to have a routine that gets you into ‘work mode’ so studying becomes almost like a ritual. There’s no need for a whole office space or even a permanent setup, having a study folder of box of study materials which you grab when getting ready to revise can be enough of a trigger to get into that workflow.
Don’t forget to keep the distractions out of reach and try out study apps which silence phone distractions while you work.
4. Accountability
Giving yourself some purpose can be a great motivator and one way to do this is to include a little external pressure. Studying with a friend or study group can help but you know yourself best, so if you work and study better alone then don’t force trying to work in a group. You can still create some accountability though by setting some goals with a friend or someone you live with. Keep these goals short, manageable and measurable. A well defined target, such as creating a mind map on a text’s protagonist, is much better to keep you motivated as you can have something tangible you can share. Tell someone that you are going to show them the flashcards you plan on making or the summary you’ll write on your revision notes. You’ll also find the sense of achievement really helps once you’ve done what you set out to do! If someone is aware of your goals it gives you that extra reason to get the work done.
5. Perfectionism is the Worst
Perfectionism causes procrastination when the fear of doing something “wrong” makes you avoid doing it at all. I can save you some suspense here too: nothing will be perfect. You can always make something better and revisiting something to try and improve it is great, in fact you can use this as part of your revision to help build your recall and retention. But you can’t improve something if it doesn’t exist first!
I find a really helpful trick is to simply give yourself permission to be bad at something. When teaching creative writing for instance an early task I’ll set is to “write the rubbish version”, literally jot down the most simple, most basic idea that you’re trying to convey. Then make it better. Try writing at the top of your page ‘first draft’ or ‘rough attempt’. Try to resist editing as you go; if you’re using the Pomodoro Technique above you can spend the first 20 minutes getting the worst, roughest version down on the page then step away from it for 5 minutes before coming back to polish and refine your work.
Any Progress is Good Progress
You won’t defeat procrastination in a single day. But with small, consistent changes and strategies that fit your style, you can build momentum and stay on top of your workload. Be honest with yourself about what you’ve achieved, when you work best and why you’re avoiding the work. And don’t forget to celebrate the wins too!