Have you ever found yourself video bingeing on Youtube when you should be studying for the most important exam of your life? I have, and it sucks.

Five minutes online quickly turns into an hour online, and thirty minutes becomes three hours. Before you know it, you take a look at the clock and it is already midnight. Time to start studying for that important exam now.

Focusing on one task can be a difficult thing to do, especially when you are pressed for time to complete it. People procrastinate to escape the pressure even if for just a brief moment and then fall into the trap of spending hours upon end on the Internet. Procrastination happens to everyone, and it is an unavoidable part of the student experience.

However, there are methods you can use to help yourself from losing track of time, and procrastinating. As long as you are consciously aware that you are procrastinating and have the desire to change your habits, you can do it. I, myself, have my fair share of struggles with procrastinating, but with a lot of experimenting during Freshman year of college, I will share some of the methods that I have found, helped me to stay on task and focused.

1. Need a study break? Take a ten minute break, but do not do anything in those ten minutes. Just lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling.

After an hour's worth of continuous work, sometimes you do need a break. You feel like your head is going to explode, and the world seems just too complicated for you to learn about. There are several ways to use a ten minute break, but the best way I have found to recover quickly, is to just lie down and stare at the ceiling. Allow yourself to relax and your mind to wander away from the task at hand. While it may not seem like it at first, ten minutes of consciously doing nothing but staring at the ceiling will feel much longer. If you really do have a pressing task to complete, this is an ideal way to relax, and still keep yourself aware of the job that needs to be done.

2. Go out for a walk or run.

Staying indoors to study for the entire day is difficult. We tell ourselves that with 12 plus hours in the day to study, it is impossible that the task we put ourselves up to will not be finished. If a person could study for 12 hours straight without feeling antsy, frustrated, and just worn out, that would be amazing. However, we are humans and as humans, we do get antsy, frustrated, and worn out when we attempt to work for long periods of time. That is why breaks are so important.

Taking a walk or run outside is a great way to get some fresh air, and remind yourself of the greater world around you. The best thing about this kind of break, is that you can stop exerting your tired mind to understand things and instead, use your physical senses to just enjoy and take in the outdoors.

3. Designate a block of time for solely the one task you have to do. Sit at your desk, and do not get up to do anything else until the time you have assigned to yourself passes.

Sometimes, starting a task requires that you confront the beast face on. Schedule a block of time in which you will do nothing but sit at your desk and work on your assignment. While you may feel nervous or even fearful about the scope of the task ahead of you, take a deep breath and give up on any expectations you may have of what you hope to accomplish, and just get started. When you consciously refrain from mentally making any difficult goals, you release yourself from the unconscious stress and burden of achieving them. This might change when you have a greater confidence in your ability to complete a task, but if you recognize that you are procrastinating from doing something, stop making goals and just commit yourself to the one task for a block of time. You may find yourself surprised to see how much you have accomplished in two hours.

This method works best when done every day. As you become more involved with a project or assignment, the process will become easier as you become more familiarized with what you are supposed to do.

4. Install the Self Control App

Despite all of the self-help books that instruct us to turn off all of our digital devices, today’s modern world makes it impossible to escape the Internet. For example, most of today’s work and academic course material are found and done online. Using the Internet is like a focus minefield. If I happen to pull up Youtube and click on a video, I can guarantee that a minimum of ten minutes will be spent looking at whatever happens to catch my eye. Same goes for Facebook.

Unfortunately, what has become a common occurrence is that we pull up tabs of sites we want to look at while others are loading. We pull up Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and others, and even if the sites you actually need are ready to be used, your focus is already distracted by the outrageous status update on Facebook, the Twitter wars going on, and the really cool dance moves happening on a Youtube video. Multi tasking on the Internet is the norm and pulling up tabs to see multiple sites simultaneously is an automatic gesture.

If you know that you have a problem of spending too much time on one site, I recommend installing the Self Control App on your computer. The Self Control App allows users to block selected sites for a certain number of hours on your computer, ranging from one to 24 hours. Be warned that you will initially get very frustrated when you try to click on a site you blocked. You might even try to find ways to hack your own computer to gain access into those sites. However, the desired outcome is that in your attempts to gain access to the blocked sites, you come to your senses and realize that perhaps, the "you" who had blocked the site earlier had good reasons to, and maybe you should do something more productive with your time.

The above methods are only four of many more ways to keep yourself motivated and focused on the tasks you need to get done. While my listed methods will not work for everyone, what I have found most important in my Freshman year in finding the right balance, is a clear set of personal priorities and a willingness to experiment on what works for me. As the new school year begins, I wish the best of luck to all of us as we brace ourselves to confront the unexpected challenges and obstacles to come.