Why we procrastinate

This blog was an assignment for an online course, which is Learning How to Learn. I omit the references because the content is based on the knowledge I got from this course.

Everyone may have some problem of delaying an important or urgent task because it is unpleasurable, which is called procrastination. For example, a student could procrastinate his/her homework to the last hour before the due time.

This essay discusses one possible reason of procrastination, analysis the insight of procrastination and provides some approaches to avoid procrastination.

When one is facing a task, he/she may encounters an unhappy feeling. It might because it is hard to solve in a short time, or simply difficult to finish. At this time, he/she would unconsciously shift his/her attention and narrow to some easy and enjoyable things. Subsequently, this person will gain a temporary happy, but more pain next time he/she has to face the task again. This is a typical routine of procrastination. One could have noticed that procrastination has a function of addiction. When procrastination gradually becomes more and more habitual, it might impact in many areas of one’s life.

One cause of the painful feeling is thinking too much about the product of a task. On the other hand, focusing on the process allow people participate the tasks in a relaxed way. The product is the final outcome of the task, which could be breakdown into small jobs. Even each of these jobs is easy to finish, the sum of them could be intimidating. Additionally, one, who is focusing on the product, has to question his/herself about the progress, which could be somehow frustrated. However, another way to manage a task is to do one piece of the task in a flow of time. In this way, a task could be accomplished by achieving many small milestones. Each time a job is done, the habit of overcoming procrastination is solidified more.

To procrastinate or to avoid it could be a habit. A habit has four aspects: the cue, the routine, the reward and the believe. For a procrastinator, the cue could be a message form social network, for instance; the routine is the shifting of attention; the reward is the temporary happy feeling; the believe is simply “I can not do it now”. For a person who is trying to avoid procrastination, the cue could be a place or time which he/she is likely to focus on the jobs; the routine could start with a plan; the reward could be anything make he/she happy after achieving a milestone; and the believe is “I can do it”.

One of the techniques to avoid procrastination is planning. A long term plan covers most important things in a long period of time, such as a week or a month. A short term plan lists things to do in a single day or even several hours. Setting up a quitting time is significant important for a short term plan because it clarifies when the jobs should be done and implies a nice reward. In both planning method, it is suggested that the most difficult task should be done as early as possible, because the rest of the jobs are always easier.

Reflective Essay about a Learning Challenge

This blog was an assignment of an online course, which is Learning How to Learn.

Assignment 1: "Reflective Essay about a Learning Challenge"
This assignment will ultimately be about 1 page long--there are five parts:
Briefly describe your current learning career and trajectory (College sophomore aiming for a degree in language?  High school student unsure of you future major but enjoying math and physics? Retired, In your mid-sixties and exploring the idea of learning something completely new?).
Briefly describe the learning aim that is of importance to you (it may be passing a particular class, excelling in a particular degree program, or something outside school, such as mastering culinary expertise.
Describe your biggest mental challenges in achieving your learning aim.
Outline existing research or learning techniques that are relevant to your challenges.
Propose how you will apply knowledge of research findings or learning techniques to help you overcome your challenges.

I am now an international student studying electrical and electronics engineering in The University of Adelaide, in the middle of the third year of a 4-year bachelor program. As I had been granted 2 years transfer credits, I directly started the program with the third year courses. So one may have been aware that I just finish my first semester here.

Obviously, as a student I should pass all the courses in the future study to obtain the degree. By saying “pass”, I mean passing each course with a grade better than “Pass”, which requires a mark not less than 65 out of 100.

At the right beginning of last semester, I had realized that the content of the courses were quite harder than I expected. Admittedly, there is a big gap between my previous education and work experience and the granted transfer credits, which means I am not totally prepared for the third year.

Additionally, because English is not my native language, I could not follow the lectures all the time, be afraid of asking questions, and consume more time on reading and writing than local students. These problems caused the study even more difficult.

Pomodoro - When I realized that I need more time for study, I soon found the Pomodoro technique. It helps people to be more effective to work and manage time.

Project management - Yet pomodoro is not good at managing time in a long term, I studied about project management. It provides some techniques of time management (and it is related to engineering). The most important ones for me are work-break-down (WBD) and Gantt Chart.

Pomodoro - It helps me to be used to the state of being focus, by ignoring the interruptions. Tuning off the notifications on my smartphone is easy to set and it does help. So now I could concentrate on studying easily. Moreover, sometimes I think 25 minutes is too short for a period of concentration and I do not want the 5-minute break to break my working, so I would change the rule from 25+5 to 50+10. I hope this change would not harm the effects of the technique.

WBD - A common cause of procrastination and bad time management is that a big job is hard to be executed. So a big job should be broken down to small tasks, until a task is fit to a 25-minute pomodoro. Then my pomodoros become more clear with aims. Similarly, a huge project should be WBD to jobs, then to small tasks. By doing this, I am not afraid of starting a huge assignment.

Gantt Chart - I reorganized my courses to projects and WBD them, so that I could apply Gantt Chart to manage my progress. I use a software which is simple but perfectly designed for this technique. What I need to do is to input the tasks, set up Gantt Chart network, reflect the progress of tasks, monitor the progress and, most importantly, make sure everything is done in time.