Procrastination exists both in regular style classrooms and in online courses. While regular style classrooms give a little more structure to learning, there is more freedom when taking online courses, which can make procrastinating come with ease.
If you’re currently taking online courses, you may be familiar with the cloud of procrastination that can hover over your head from time to time. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways that you can combat feelings of being unmotivated and uninspired while taking online classes! Are you someone who procrastinates more often than not? Looking for some tips on how to get your work done effectively in your online course? Check out these top five ways to kick your procrastination habit!
Find Your Motivation, Then Use It!
Finding motivation for class is not just exclusive to online classes, but can apply to all. Online classes, however, are different from regular classroom ones because they are 100% virtual and are attended/completed at home. Because of this, you are way more vulnerable to distractions that can make it hard to be motivated to sit down at your desk for an hour or so and dedicate time to your online class.
A great way to fuel your motivation is to write out a schedule of tasks to do each day for your online courses; include a time period and the length of time it will take you to accomplish your task, this will help you to hold yourself accountable, stay on top of your to-do list, and avoid procrastinating! Furthermore, if you find that you really have trouble with procrastinating, sticking to deadlines or starting on time, set alarms and timers on your phone to remind you when you would like to start something and time it to avoid getting distracted.
Remove Distractions
Speaking of distractions, when you are engaging in your online class, try to take preemptive measures to reduce distractions, as this will help to keep you from procrastinating. Social media, texting, music and television, etc. are all huge distractions that can affect your participation in online classes. Take breaks when you feel that you deserve one, perhaps to get a snack or something, and set a timer.
During your break you can have the freedom to be consumed by all of your distractions, however, once that timer ends, get back to work! Doing so again helps build self-discipline and pushes you to get your work done faster.
Break Up Your Work
It is incredibly easy to become overwhelmed with a certain amount of schoolwork when everything piles up all at once. When this happens, the task seems too large to conquer or complete, making it easy to procrastinate and put off doing the work. To help avoid waiting until the last minute to complete assignments, break up your work into smaller chunks to make it easier to deal with. If you can do little pieces of work here and there, you’ll notice that you finished the assignment in a reasonable amount of time and didn’t overwhelm yourself in the process!
A blog post by Study.com uses an example of completing a large research paper to help, stating, “ maybe you have a 10-page research paper due in your English class in two weeks. Instead of thinking that you’ll never be able to get the paper done in two weeks, break it down into little steps that can be tackled individually. These steps could be: gathering research and information, creating an outline, writing pages 1-5, writing pages 6-10, proofreading, etc.”
Find a Study Buddy
Because you’re not in a physical classroom, engaging with fellow students is a bit more disconnected than usual. In this case, to try and help with procrastinating, find a study buddy or make a friend in your online course and ask if you both can do work or study together. Having another person in your circle can hold you accountable on the work you need to complete and motivate you to do so!
Pick the Perfect Work Space
If you don’t have a place to work when taking classes online, projects, tests, essays, etc. can be nearly impossible to do- leaving you trying to scramble and save your grade from potentially failing.
Whether you want to bask in the sunshine while learning statistics or listen to Bon Iver in Starbucks while tackling Shakespeare, you have the world at your feet and a multitude of options when it comes to working online and creating the best place to do so.
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