It’s the day before your group assignment is due, and you haven’t done your part. You’re scrambling to find resources, cite them correctly, and rid your assignment of errors before you completely run out of energy. You silently wonder why you waited until the last minute, why your partners got their parts done so early, why? You then crumble onto the floor and fold yourself into a ball, letting an existential crisis take over you.

We all know this reality all too well. Procrastinating is always fun in the moment. It means that you don’t have to do anything now, because everything can wait until later. You have what seems like an infinite amount of free time. That is, until later finally comes. Then you realize procrastination was a bad idea and vow to never do it again -- that is, until your next study session comes along.

In the long run, waiting until the last minute doesn’t help anyone -- except for people that do well “under pressure,” but we’re not talking of them. Avoiding procrastination is simple, and I’m surprised that more people haven’t gotten hip to the solution:

Time. Management.

That’s right, time management is the simple answer to all of your study, homework, and project problems. Here are some tips on managing your time well.

1. Get a Planner: This is a good investment. A planner will help you keep track of assignments and their due dates, as well as things like club meetings and your work schedule, and it’ll give you a convenient place to write down your random ideas. Some schools give you planners at the beginning of the academic year. If your school isn’t one of those, they should only run you between $5 and $10.
2. Use Your Syllabi: If your professor doesn’t give you a hard copy of the syllabus, print it off -- it’s worth the money. There you’ll find all of your reading, quiz, and test schedules for the duration of the class. Then you’ll know when you have something due, how convenient!
3. Use Colors: Pens, sticky notes, and markers of different colors can be extremely helpful, especially for those of us that are visual learners. Associating certain times, classes, or levels of importance with a color may help you better remember them.
4. Prioritize: Do important things first! Do the homework that’s due tomorrow before the homework that’s due a week from now. It just makes sense, guys.
5. Pace Yourself (or Not): Some people find it easier to do group projects a little at a time. For instance, you may find it useful to split your assignment into smaller pieces and assign yourself a certain chunk to work on every day. On the other hand, you may want to do the entire project in one sitting. This is the course of action that I prefer, as I find that it offers the best results because I don’t allow myself to develop distaste for the assignment -- therefore, I don’t dread working on it down the line.