How to stop ~procrastination~

So you want to stop procrastinating huh...

—What are you doing here! Are you supposed to be studying right now!?

Hmmm 🧐

I'm going to pretend you finished all your chores, homework, studying, MCAT, schools, application, shadowing, ECs ... uff, I'm already tired by just thinking about it.

I should go to sleep. I will finish writing about this tomorrow.

Gn.

[ Tomorrow ]

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the blog.

Sorry about that, I don't know what happened there, I just got an INTENSE amount of procrastination on me. Surely I'm not the only one that goes through that right?

I hope not, so embarrassing...

Anywayssss

I have noticed that procrastination is such a normal thing for us students to experience in our daily lives.

We want to do the work, but the work somehow piles up throughout the days and then it's even harder to get it done!

I have had several experiences with procrastination, but the most recently one was during my MCAT studying.

Throughout my MCAT studying, I decided that I was going to beat procrastination.

So I did a monthly To-Do List with everything I needed to study for that specific day for a whole month. So if I went to the library and didn't know what to study, I had the To-Do List that would basically tell me what to do and what to focus on for that day without losing time and wondering around.

Or so I thought.

Here is a picture of my monthly to do list after the month went by:

As you can see, not a lot of studying was done 😭

I was heartbroken (and I still am) because I procrastinated for a WHOLE MONTH on my MCAT studying. The month of my content review. Crashed. Gone. Useless. A whole month for nothing. Wasted.

So when I went to the second phase of my learning, the practice phase. I knew NOTHING! And with good reason.

Now at this point it was pointless to go back, as it was also pointless to start the content review once again.

So what did I do?

I had to change my plans, one way or another.

I first stopped to think:

1. Why did my plan did not work?
2. What did I do in said study time?
3. What would I change from my previous plan?

I wrote the answers down and began brain storming.

My main concern was how I was going to get back on track with my MCAT studying after a whole month of doing basically nothing.

My answers were:

1. It probably didn't work because I did not give myself time to rest, both during my study time and after I was supposedly done. I was mentally suffocated after only one week of studying went by. I also didn't like passively learning from a book or long videos that felt endless. It made me sleepy and would loose track of it very easily.
2. I spent most of that time sleeping at the beginning (mostly cause I was tired or bored) and then changed it to quality time with my family and friends. I stopped going to the library in the middle of the month saying to myself that I was going to study at home (never worked before for me)
3. I would change everything. If nothing is working, then change everything. That was my mentally, I was over it.

This is how I changed my plan.

• I switched from passive learning to active learning.
• Did more practice questions in UWorld while incorporating the content review with Anki cards.
• I did space learning to remember previous content.
• Tried the Pomodoro technique to keep me on track while studying through long periods of time.
• I gave myself breaks and times of rest during study and after study time.
• I went to the library to study. And when I couldn't, I prepared a small study desk in my room that had everything that helped me get into the study mood (candles, books, soft warm light, etc).

So yeah...

I cannot promise you that now thanks to that I have never procrastinated again. Pff, I wish!

This is more of a marathon instead of a sprint, and the choice to stay consistent needs to be done by you everyday.

But this way, now I know what works for me and what helps me get into the study mood faster than before and stay consistent in it without letting it pile up on me like a mountain of laundry clothes that need to be washed.

Bottomline is,

You can do it!

I decided to try all of these new things and believe it or not, it worked wonders!

I can now study in my house more easily and with the new studying plan that I made, I feel that I'm retaining and learning much more information than before.

I definitely have learned more in 1 week than in the whole month I tried to forcely squeeze the info into my brain.

The trick is, learn what works best for you!

You can do it friend! :)

See you in the next one!