Time is the most valuable resource in life. It is also the most poorly utilized resource in life, especially on college campuses. When and how the vast majority of students choose to tackle their assignments, particularly long-term projects, often causes so much harm to the students’ schedules that they are forced to spend days on end stressing and pulling all-nighters before deadlines.

Does that sound like you? Sadly, this is true for just about all of us (I still get nightmares about my first semester of freshman year). The worst part of it, though, is that most of us believe that this is an inevitable part of college life. People start dreading those last few days before a big assignment is due months in advance, creating a large amount of unnecessary stress that does nothing but weigh them down and kill productivity.

I have two pieces of good news for anybody who’s managed to get themselves caught in this vicious cycle. One, it’s not hard to break out of it at all, and two, you don’t have to cut procrastination out of your life.

I’ll start with the second piece of good news, since it might seem impossible to believe that procrastination and good grades/a stress-free life can go hand-in-hand. Don't the students who make the top grades finish all of their assignments weeks before they’re due? I’ve never actually met anybody like this, and I know plenty of people who still make straight As. What they’re really doing is being a little smarter about when they choose to procrastinate. That’s it.

Let’s take an example: you have four weeks, starting today, to write a paper between eight and 10 pages on a topic that you couldn’t care less about, but is worth 30 percent of your grade. Instead of choosing to dread it and not touch it again until four, three or (for the truly insane) two days before it’s due, you choose to set small goals that gradually piece the whole puzzle together until it’s finished. After choosing to write the full 10 pages because that’s just the kind of student you are, you write two pages this week, three pages the next week, three pages the third week and finish with two pages the week it’s due. You might even choose to work more during the first or second week, too, which would give you chance to finish the paper a full week before it’s due. But the absolute most you would have to work is two to three hours each week until it’s done.

Here’s where you have to be smart about when you procrastinate: it’s easy to push something off that doesn’t appear to immediately require your attention. You’ll need to conjure up a certain amount of discipline each week so that you stay on track and finish the assignment according to your original plan (preferably during the day, when you’re the most alert and concentrated). This is where the wheels come off for most people. Most people will take the entire amount of time and effort it takes to write those 10 pages and push it off until they’re too stressed out to ignore it any longer. Somehow, the idea of putting in an hour or two each week is less preferable than putting in 10 hours in one or two nights, right when you’re in the worst possible position to be producing college-level work.

Thank goodness you’re no longer employing that strategy anymore. The key, once again, is to find those increments of time that are hidden in your schedule, even if it’s just a few minutes here and there, to set aside for getting what you need to get done done. In doing so you’ll separate yourself from everyone else and the mountains of unneeded stress, leaving you with more time to have fun during four of the best years of your life.