Better Under Pressure?

I was sitting at my desk with my earbuds in, doing pretty much nothing because I know double-tasking isn’t good as everyone says – it actually hurts our concentration. I spent an hour doing meaningless tasks, an excuse to listen to music yet still do “work.” Finally, it was 7 PM. And guess what? I had homework. A lot of it.

I rushed through my papers, scrambling to understand, process, and solve equations, write notes for history, review for the test(s) tomorrow, find my lost pencil, circumnavigate Earth, explore the deep sea(jk) … all before 11:00(I really wanted to get enough sleep). Now, you can easily see how that’s nearly impossible to do and highly inefficient. Well, I realized that too, but I didn’t really do anything about it. It went on for many days, almost like a routine.

Then I finally asked myself: “Why am I doing this?” Music was my escape route – a way to have all my troubles and homework fade into the background, a way to relax. It was a method of avoidance. It was ultimate procrastination.

I wouldn’t be able to do higher-thinking processes because at 11:47 PM, I was too busy dreaming about sleeping on my wonderful bed. So, did this intense pressure help me in anyway? I mean, I did kind of get my homework done “faster.” Well, psychologists disagree.

Psychologist Tim Pychyl discusses this matter. Stress makes it harder for your brain to function, burdening it with cognitive loads that can interfere with your ability to not only learn and assimilate knowledge, but also to translate ideas into meaningful information. People under pressure have been shown many times to make more errors of omission (not doing or including something they should have) and commission (doing something, but doing it wrong or poorly) than people working on a more spaced out time scale. People obviously respond differently to stress, says Pychyl, so these studies reflect a lot of individual differences when it comes to how much we can tolerate before having our performance suffer – but suffer it most certainly does.

Studying becomes something more materialistic, now based on a reward system – it’s no longer about learning simply for the love of learning. It’s about getting it done, which sounds great but really isn’t if you don’t understand what you’re doing. The pressure and stress from meeting closeby deadlines can carry into the future as health ailments as well.

So, how do you overcome this vicious cycle of procrastination, guilt, and stress? There are several ways. One would be to create artificial “pressure. ” Set a 20 minute timer and finish that first paragraph. Ask a friend to be your “accountability buddy” and hand in regular updates of your work. Don’t think you have to finish all of the task in one sitting – break it up!

We all know how difficult it is to get started, but once you have, things are in motion(physics reference). So next time you decide to ignore your blank essay paper, tell yourself that you have to at least some of it now.

Trust me. It’s better.

For more on how to NOT procrastinate, visit here.