How to avoid procrastinating over school work

As humans, we always find ourselves in situations where we can become better people.  Whether we actually change or not is based on the individual. I feel like as I grow older, my perspective on what I want to change and improve in myself has changed. Since I was little, I was always pushed to focus on school. At a young age, I would try to teach myself the next topic or learn a topic that would be taught in the older grades. As I continue to do this, it became a reflex and not something I enjoyed. I started to stray away from school work and  instead focus on the materialistic things that I enjoyed.  Then during 3rd grade, my teacher noticed my work wasn’t  as efficient as it used to be. She believed I needed a little motivation and convinced me to join the school’s math competition. She told me if I studied efficiently,  I would qualify to participate in the competition. 

I immediately felt rejuvenated and excited about learning again. I surprised myself because during that whole process I did not once become annoyed and tired from doing my work.  Once the competition commenced, we were told that multiplication was the topic. I had to compete against my class and if I won, I would have to go against each class winner. The competition resulted in me being the winner of both my class and my grade. My teacher came up to me with the award and told me that she hoped I was able to grasp what my situation was and how I was supposed to learn from this.

I learned that life will always give you obstacles. It’s our job to figure out the lesson that life is trying to teach us and to overcome those obstacles. For example, later on I learned that whenever I overwork my brain on a task or any type of work, I lose interest in actually doing it and I throw it aside and procrastinate. This leads to me figuring out my biggest weakness for school, which is procrastination. As much as I dislike the thought of me procrastinating, I always end up procrastinating involuntarily. I anticipated that incentives would give the drive to motivate me enough. However, I was able to comprehend that I procrastinate because of the process and not the end goal. When I realized this, I remembered a very famous quote that is shown everywhere. The intent of  “Work smarter...not harder” by Allen F. Morgenstern is if I’m able to make my work more enjoyable, I would complete the work more efficiently.

This concept really helped me with doing school work. Whenever I begin my work, I like to put on a show I like or music that I enjoy. This helps keep my brain busy and not focused on procrastinating. The work gets done quicker because while completing my work, I’m more focused on the work. I know the process isn’t conventional but it works. Before I tended to not complete my work as much, however now I complete quality work with terrific grades. This concept also works with my everyday life and now whether it’s chores, personal work or anything at all, I’m more punctual with my tasks. 

Overall my work-rate became better and I can’t wait to go to college with such an improved mindset. As I grew up, I’ve enjoyed the obstacles that life threw at me and through that I’ve become a strong believer in life lessons. So whatever obstacles that are thrown at me as a college student or even as an adult, I know, I’ll enjoy every second of it.