How to Stop Procrastinating When You Need to Study

Why you procrastinate on studying

Procrastination is not the same as laziness. A lazy person is content doing nothing; a procrastinating student usually feels worse the longer the delay goes on, and often fills the time with other work, such as tidying the desk, answering messages or reorganizing notes. Psychologists who study procrastination increasingly describe it as a problem of managing emotions rather than managing time. A task that feels boring, confusing or threatening produces an unpleasant feeling, putting it off makes the feeling go away for now, and that quick relief is what makes the habit repeat.

This explains patterns that otherwise seem odd. You can avoid one subject for weeks while working steadily on another, because only one of them makes you feel out of your depth. And a deadline six weeks away barely registers, while the same task becomes easy to start the night before, when the fear of not finishing outweighs the discomfort of starting.

Work out what kind of procrastination you have

“I procrastinate” covers several different problems, and each needs a different first fix. Think back over the last few times you put off studying and match them to the patterns below. One or two patterns often account for most of the delay, which tells you where to start.

How to stop procrastinating right now: the ten-minute start

This routine is for the moment of avoidance itself. Its aim is not to make you want to study; it is to get you started before reluctance gets a vote, because starting is usually the worst part, and a task tends to feel smaller once you are inside it. If the routine works, the Pomodoro technique for studying can stretch it into a full session.

1. 1Name the task, then write its very next physical action in one line: not “revise biology” but “open the enzyme notes and cover the right-hand page.”
2. 2Shrink that action until it would take ten minutes or less. If ten minutes still feels like too much, make it five.
3. 3Put your phone in another room or a drawer, and close every browser tab you do not need for this task.
4. 4Set a timer for ten minutes and tell yourself, truthfully, that you may stop when it rings.
5. 5Start badly on purpose. A messy first answer or a wrong first attempt is fine; the goal is motion.
6. 6When the timer rings, decide whether to stop or keep going. You will often want to continue, and if you stop, you have still done ten minutes.
7. 7Before you finish for the day, write tomorrow's first action on a note and leave it on top of your books.

Use if-then plans so you do not have to decide

Much procrastination happens at the moment of decision: it is four o'clock, you could study now or later, and later wins. An if-then plan, which researchers call an implementation intention, makes that decision in advance. Instead of a goal such as “study more this week,” you write a rule linking a specific situation to a specific action: “When I get home from class on Tuesday, I will sit at the kitchen table and do three practice questions on supply and demand before I check my phone.” Research on implementation intentions has found that plans in this form make people more likely to follow through than goals alone.

A good plan names when, where and the first action, and hooks onto something that already happens reliably, such as arriving home or a class ending. Some examples:

• When I sit down on the train in the morning, I will answer ten flashcards on this week's vocabulary.
• When my last class on Thursday ends, I will go straight to the library and outline one essay answer.
• If I notice I have read the same paragraph twice, I will close the book and write down what I remember.
• If I want to check my phone during a study block, I will write the urge on scrap paper and check it at the break.

Make distractions harder to reach than your books

Willpower is a poor plan, because it is weakest when you are tired, stressed or bored, which is exactly when procrastination strikes. A better plan is to change the effort involved: make the distracting option a little harder and the study option a little easier. Small amounts of friction matter, because the urge to escape a task often passes if acting on it takes a minute instead of a second. For keeping your attention once you have started, see how to focus while studying.

• Keep your phone out of the room while you study, not face down on the desk.
• Log out of social media on your laptop, so each visit means typing a password.
• Use a website blocker during study blocks if you study on a computer.
• The night before, leave the book open at the right page with a pen on it, so starting takes no setup.
• Study in a place used only for work, such as a library desk, if your room is full of other options.

Deal with the feeling behind the procrastination

If procrastination is avoidance of a feeling, the most lasting fix is to change the feeling. Boredom responds to making the task more active: answering questions or explaining an idea aloud holds attention better than reading. Confusion responds to getting unstuck: find the exact sentence or step where your understanding breaks, and ask a teacher, a classmate or a tutor about that point alone. Fear of doing badly responds to lowering the stakes of the first attempt by calling it a draft or a practice run.

How you treat yourself after a delay matters too. Harsh self-criticism after a lost evening makes the task feel even worse, which makes avoiding it more attractive. Research on students has found that those who forgave themselves for procrastinating before one exam tended to procrastinate less before the next. Note what happened, plan the next first step, and move on.

Sometimes procrastination is a sign of something study tips will not fix. If avoidance comes with persistent low mood, anxiety that does not settle, or attention problems you have had for years, talk to a doctor, a counselor or your school's student support service. The guide to managing exam stress covers when stress needs more than study advice.

Bring deadlines closer and bring other people in

A deadline six weeks away has little pull on how you spend tonight. Split long tasks into parts with their own dates, a week or less apart, and put those dates where you will see them, such as a revision timetable you'll stick to. A chapter a week works better than one exam date, because each week has a deadline close enough to feel real.

Other people make deadlines stronger. Tell a friend what you will have finished by Friday and ask them to check. Even working in the same room as someone else who is studying can make starting easier. And keep rewards for after the work: an episode watched once the problem set is done gives the task a finish line, while one watched first only moves the start.