Dear Coach,
When spring is in the air, It’s impossible to concentrate. Help I’m falling behind!
Signed,
Sunny
Dear Sunny,
There’s no denying it. Everyone feels like goofing off on a warm, sunny day. Unfortunately responsibilities of school, work and home don’t stop when the weather gets nice. Here are some ideas you can use to keep yourself on track:
Work with your urge to procrastinate
- Work at night when the call to be outdoors and playing isn’t so compelling.
- Do a moderate amount of vigorous outdoor exercise, then study.
- Take your studying outdoors – some of the time. It’s not as efficient, but at least you’re working rather than looking out the window.
- And next year, plan for spring fever by taking a heavy load in the winter and a lighter load in the spring.
Be accountable
- Get a study buddy and make an agreement that you’ll each get so much done in the next few hours. Knowing you’ve made a commitment to someone else really helps. It’s the power of accountability.
- Whatever you do not take a incomplete. Do whatever you have to do to finish a course. Or you may never finish it at all.
Schedule your study time
- Apply the principal of exercise intervals to studying. Instead of alternating sprinting and walking, alternate study and play. Set a timer and work hard for 30 or 60 minutes then play for the next interval of minutes. Then do it again. Just be sure you quit playing as readily as you quit working!
- Plan to procrastinate. Know when your deadlines are and how much time the tasks will take, and then do them when nothing else on the list is more important to get done because the deadline is NOW.
Study smarter not harder
- Know which classes will cut you slack so you can put energy into the ones that won’t.
- Know when you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. If you’ve worked for 5 hours and know that’s enough to get an A- on the paper and it will take 5 more hours to get an A but there’s other work that needs to be done, move on!
If you have a question you’d like our resident ADHD coach to answer, feel free to add it to the comments and we’ll try to answer it in a future post.