Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic A million other things to do

I just need to vent a little. I'm a hopeless procrastinator. I plan and plan and eventually get around to doing whatever I need to do - usually on top of a deadline. And I can't help but panic and wonder if the work wouldn't be better if I'd done it sooner - for my credit it usually ends up with good results anyway.
But on those rare ocasions when I actually can finish the work with a lot of time to spare I end up doing anything else I can think of with my time to avoid the most urgent task - including this thread... And I can only finish the work when the dreaded "panic hour" arrives.
Be at peace: we're talking college papers here. I'm not a neurosurgeon or a structural engineer or something that implies life and death decisisons. And I'm currently talking about a news story about farming habits in the middle of the city that needs to be written in less than 30 hours - all interviews done and edited. It's doable, but it could have been finished Monday if I hadn't become antsy everytime I opened the word document of doom for the last month or so.
Confused? So am I.
My stress levels go up everytime I try to finish the paper and I can only deal with it (knowing from past experience) in the last 24 hours before deadline. But I still get anxious because I start to believe that the outcome could be better.
Do you have any advice for me? Do you deal with the same problem? And if you do, how?



I'll try and finish the paper in the meantime...

I too, work best under pressure, and am frustrated time to time by my amazing ability to procrastinate. How I get around it is to sort of make an agreement with myself to do things in small steps. I was taking online courses last year, with a paper due once a week. I'm a pretty good academic writer, and as I previously stated, a good procrastinator. So I would tell myself, ok, just look up the 5 articles needed for the paper today. Just do that much. Little steps. Another technique I have is setting a timer. Work straight for 45 minutes or an hour--and that's all I need to do for the day. And I should add, when I use the timer trick, I usually end up working longer than the timer, because I've forced myself to focus for that period of time and am finally engrossed in my task.

Hope that helps!

Thank you! I'm going to follow your advice and see how it works for me

Yes, I agree with mozartmaid. Getting started is the hardest part. Then once you get into it, time flies. I do my stories in tiny pieces sometimes.

Artemis