✧ student productivity ✧
Are you by chance a student in quarantine? Do you happen to use social media as your most of your summer break in quarantine? Have you seen yourself procrastinating on social media as temporary enjoyment even with the grueling amount of work you’ve left off?
Well, you’ve come to the right place!
Ever since quarantine, more and more people find themselves scrolling aimlessly on social media. Platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, etc. saw major increases in downloads and users as virtual interaction is the only kind of interaction we can safely have these days. But now, we’ve gone back to school, albeit virtually. If anything, teachers and lecturers might even expect more from their students with all the more time in our hands.
We’ve gotten used to the schedule of:
Wake up -> Open Instagram -> Open Twitter -> Open Youtube -> Open TikTok -> Sleep
Going back to an academic environment may be a difficult transition with procrastination just looming over to get a hold of you. If you feel as if you relate a lot to this and want to do better, good for you for recognising and admitting to your concerns! It’s nothing to be guilty about. It is impossible to completely cut social media out of our lives at this moment seeing as we are not experiencing great social contact as of the moment. However, it’s best if you could cut down on social media usage as the awareness that a task is of importance yet the constant ignorance to have fun on social media is detrimental to your academic performance. So, to keep your performance up and make your lecturers proud of your work here are some strategies that can help you combat procrastination (Alblwi et al., 2019):
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Goal Setting is a plan that aims to motivate you to reach your goal, set priorities to list down the most urgent tasks to do first, and set time frames on when to do and complete them. Set up smaller goals if the due date is far off so you’d still be doing progress along the way. Tell your friends about your goals so that they are aware of your current situation and think twice about trying to contact you in case it will make you reply then check on other notifications and thus procrastinate.
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Calendar Integration - statuses on WhatsApp like “busy” or “studying” or on other platforms that support statuses on one’s profile can be a countermeasure in case one tries to contact you during work, auto-reply can also be a standardised option, turn off your notifications to avoid checking.
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Reminder - set reminders of what needs to be done, remind yourself of how much time you’ve spent on social media, customise reminders to your preferences in regards to how frequently you get them, and the effect it has on your procrastination
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Self-monitoring - raising awareness of one’s own procrastination, informed details about social media usage, and restrictions of social media. Check your screen usage and see what apps you’ve been spending your time on so you can limit yourself in the future.
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Task Commitment - focusing on tasks without distractions. Commitment can be driven by one’s motivation to complete the task. If self-commitment doesn’t work, commit to the public so that you have an expectation to fulfill such as broadcasting your study session, posting your notes, or something of the sorts.
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Task Rewards - simple rewards after tasks can help motivate you to eventually complete it. A candy after each page read,
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Task Milestone - dividing milestones for large tasks and setting rewards at the end of each phase to help motivate you to complete the task.
Hope these suggestions find you well as it may have others. It takes some time to find the right study method if you haven't found it yet so try experimenting with what you’ve seen others do and adapt it to your needs. Good luck in finishing your online studies, cut down on social media, stay hydrated, stay healthy, and stay at home!
References
Alblwi A, Stefanidis A, Phalp K, Ali R. Procrastination on Social Networking Sites: Combating by Design. In: 2019 13th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS). IEEE; 2019:1-11. doi:10.1109/RCIS.2019.8876959