ProcrastinationDoes Your Child Procrastinate?Or, for that matter, do YOU procrastinate?Key points
There are ways to help kids with procrastination.
For example, make studying a habit, not a choice.
And save a reward for after the hard task is done.
Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist and author of How To Outsmart Your Brain and Why Don't Students Like School? has some tips for procrastinators.I am going to summarize them here — and add a few of my own — because we all procrastinate sometimes, and some people, including some children, procrastinate a lot.For most procrastinators, the problem is that they don't know how to stop. So here are the tips to help:1. Think up a reward for after the studying or job is done. It can be a fun activity, time on a video game, or a treat.Instead of doing this, many procrastinators put the fun first. They say, "Oh just let me play this video game for a while before I study..." But then they find that they play the video game for longer than they intended and don't have enough — or any — time left to study. Do the hard thing first. Then do the fun thing.2. Don't rely on willpower to get the job done, rely on habit. Set up a time to do work — whether it's homework or studying or a household project. Do it at that time every day for as long as it takes. For kids in school or college, that means, having dedicated study time at a certain time of day or as part of a sequence of activities on weekdays and weekends. And by "a sequence of activities", I mean that it may work better if it is, for example, after the after-school snack or, for a college student, after their daily workout (even if that's not at the same time each day).It will take as long as 60 days for this to truly become a habit, but Willingham says that by doing something over and over, it becomes a habit — and it takes much less energy to engage in a habit than it does to make yourself (or your child) just do something at a random time of day.Willingham also says establishing work or study as a daily habit is better because you remove the need to choose to do the work. You just do it. You don't have to decide to do it each time.3. If you or your child are overwhelmed by how much you have to do, make a to-do list before you start doing anything else. List what you have to do in small, manageable tasks. And then do one task at a time. Do not look at the whole list. Do not think about all you have to do. It's down on paper. You won't forget. And you also won't feel as overwhelmed if you just go one task at a time.4. When it's time to work, just start. Willingham reminds us that things we don't want to do seem worse to us before we do them. Once we start we often find they aren't as bad as we predicted.5. Tell others what you are going to be doing — or have your child do this. This makes you — or your child — accountable. People are more likely to do things that others know they are going to do.6. Plan breaks. Tell yourself — or tell your child — you only have to work for 10 or 20 minutes before you take a break. Often giving yourself or your child permission to take a break makes starting the task easier and leads to doing it for longer than the 10 or 20 minutes you allotted as a time to start the job.When I was in grad school I did this with running. I didn't want to run, I was too tired or too busy. But if I told myself I only had to go a mile. I would usually start going and end up doing the whole 3 miles — or even more — because once I got going it felt better and easier than expected!7. Be aware of what you — or your child — say in your own mind about the task and your ability to do it. Often procrastinators think something like, "This is too hard" or "I'm not smart enough anyway, why even start?" These are self-defeating thoughts and they are often incorrect. Be aware that these might get in the way of starting!
