Hi, I'm Mackenzie and I'm a chronic procrastinator. I tend to put anything and everything off until the very last minute. I wait until the night before to start school projects, I will leave my house at the last minute to go to work, I put off sleep to go on social media and if fact, I procrastinated writing this article. It's become a real problem, especially when it came to my college application. My application is due tomorrow and I just sent out the last of my things tonight. I put off doing some things because things like projects, work and of course college applications cause me stress and I want to avoid that as much as possible. However, this only back-fires because then I have to rush to get things done, causing me even more stress than to begin with. While working on my college application or even before while I had the thought in the back of my mind I was completely stressed about it. I got panic attacks just thinking about it, I lost my appetite, I had trouble sleep, and I got itchy bumps all over my arms and legs. I was a mess. I created my own stress and I fixed it as well.
1. I talked to my friends
This is the most important step I think. Even if I didn't feel like talking and I'd rather lay in bed and watch a movie, I forced myself to talk to my friends. I did this because after a night or two of talking to them on Skype I found myself feeling more relieved. We can joke as well as them helping me stay calm with all the stress. It might be true that laughter is the best medicine because I went to bed much happier on the nights I talked to them.
2. Sleep
Since I was going to bed much happier, I slept better. I also started forcing myself to go to bed at a decent hour. This helped me be more productive the next day which caused me to be able to actually be able to do my work in school. This eliminated the amount of work I brought home.
3. Leave on time for things
This is such a silly thing because I should just do it anyways but I wasn't doing it so I had to start. It was unnecessary to feel stress about being late to work when it's such an easy thing to avoid.
4. Do the new tasks before it's too late
Since things start to pile up, it's easy for the new tasks such as homework and projects to be set to the side as you struggle to do the ones you procrastinated. I found it easier to do the new tasks as soon as they are given and then work on the ones that have been put off. That way, I didn't fall into the vicious cycle.
5. Stay on top of things
Once everything that I put off was finished, I started to stay on top of things in order to avoid having a long to-do list again.
This isn't really supposed to be a how-to for others but rather me sharing my experience and if someone happens to get something helpful off of this then I'm glad. Never do tomorrow what you can do today.
