In college, there is nothing more terrifying than a blank page. The assignment is almost due, you have no ideas on what to write, and you wonder if you even still can. The vast whiteness of the canvas seems as blank and featureless as your very own mind. You begin to stare at the clock? Lay with your phone? Adjust your sitting position (maybe if you lie down that will make it easier to think?) Perhaps you even start reading a few things online, you know, just to help get the juices in your brain running again. You’ll do anything to avoid having to stare at that blank page.

If you have experienced any of these symptoms, you are suffering from the early stages of what many mistakenly refer to as “writer’s block,” but the proper, more scientific term is known as “procrastination”. Don’t worry, there’s a very simple cure for this, and it doesn’t require medicine or a co-pay at the drug store, allow me to share it with you.

Step 1: Write Something

Just write something – anything. It doesn’t need to make sense, or even have anything to do with whatever it is you’re supposed to be writing about, just give that blank page some ink – or, in our modern digital age, give that screen some pixels is probably a more relevant term. Though it may seem like a waste of time to write something irrelevant to your topic, this is what breaks the fever of procrastination. It doesn’t matter what you write about as long as long as you’re writing something. Write about weather that day. Write about what you had for breakfast that morning. Write about how your stomach hurts because you didn’t have breakfast that morning. My personal favorite, however, is to write about how you have no idea what to write about. The effect is like trying to tear down a dam. Once you put one crack in it, the others will start to form themselves, and before you know it, the dam breaks, and out comes flooding all of the wondrous thoughts and ideas you had hidden on the other side.