Procrastination: Crash Course Study Skills #6 Video Lecture | Enhance your Study Skills: How to Study and Prepare? - Personal Skills

Down to brass tacks, friend.
Last week we covered several techniques
for improving your ability to focus on your
work and resist distractions.
This week we’re digging into a related issue,
which is in fact the most pernicious problem that
perpetually plagues pupils… procrastination.
Nick, I still think that intro needs more
alliteration. And cowbell.
[Theme Music]
Before we dive into specific solutions, it’s
useful to know why we procrastinate.
Now, we could go deep on the biological battle
between your prefrontal cortex and your limbic
system, or in a million other directions,
but since our focus is on solving the
procrastination problem, one recent explanation
that I find to be particularly useful is
Temporal Motivation Theory, which is
laid out by Dr. Piers Steele in his book
The Procrastination Equation.
This theory suggests that a person’s motivation
to complete a task or assignment can be
represented by – you guessed it – an equation.
And that equation is:
Motivation = (Expectancy * Value) / (Impulsiveness
* Delay)
Now, while I don’t really think all the
complexities of human behavior can be boiled
down into a neat little equation,
I do think that this Procrastination Equation
is a useful mental model for pinpointing the
specific causes of our procrastination.
So let’s go ahead and break it down.
Expectancy is a term that represents how strongly
you believe that you’re able to complete a task, and it
has an inverse correlation with your procrastination.
If you feel competent at what you’re doing,
your expectancy will be high and that will
increase your motivation to get to work.
If the task looks really difficult, though,
expectancy will be low and you’ll be more
likely to procrastinate.
The other place where you’ll find that inverse
correlation is between procrastination and Value,
which includes the rewards you get for completing
the task, as well as how pleasant – or unpleasant –
the experience of actually doing it is.
Impulsiveness is how susceptible you are to
distractions and, well, impulses to do other things,
and it’s directly correlated with procrastination.
The less able you are to resist that sudden
desire to go check Twitter, the more you’re going
to put off working on that English paper.
And if you’re thinking about going to check
Twitter right now, remember:
if you can resist that impulse, you’ll actually
be strengthening your brain’s ability to focus.
So fight it, friend.
Finally, there’s Delay, which is the amount
of time between now and when you’ll get
the reward for completing the task.
Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
The longer the delay is, the more you’ll
tend to procrastinate.
This happens because human beings
naturally place far more value on the short-term
rather than long-term rewards –
even if those long-term rewards are
objectively greater.
For most of human history, this was a helpful
bit of brain programming.
If you were a hunter-gatherer living in 10,000
BCE, you had no reason to care about the antelopes
you were gonna hunt in 3 years –
all that mattered was the one in front of you right now.
But today, when your success in life depends more
on studying for tests and remembering to put money
in an IRA than on your antelope-hunting skills,
your brain’s hard-wired preference for
short-term rewards becomes a hinderance.
It’s the main reason why you consistently find
yourself cramming for tests the night before;
rationally, you know you should start studying
a few weeks in advance, but most of your brain
is like, “Eh, is that really necessary?”
And to make matters worse, Delay is the hardest
factor in the equation to control, since the time at
which we’ll get a task’s reward is often set in stone.
This is especially true when you’re in school,
since almost everything has a due date.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
It’s useful to simply be able to recognize that the delay between now and when you’ll reap a task’s reward matters a lot when it comes to your procrastination.
And, really, that’s the value of the equation
as a whole; it’s a mental model that makes it
easy to pinpoint why you’re procrastinating.
If it’s because you feel like you’re not
skilled enough to actually complete the task, then
you need to find a way to increase Expectancy.
Or, if you notice that your attention is constantly
being pulled in other directions, then it’s time to
figure out how to decrease your Impulsiveness.
So now let’s go over some specific ideas for
manipulating those three most malleable factors.
To raise Expectancy you can do several things.
One of the most helpful is to break the task
down into smaller sub-tasks.
Doing this allows you to narrow your focus
to something that’s not nearly as daunting,
and it also lets you more clearly define the
specific actions you have to take.
So if you’re writing a paper, realize that
“write a paper” is a project that can – and
should – be broken down.
You’ve got the research phase, the rough draft
phase – which you can break further down into
sections, like the intro, arguments, and conclusion –
and then you’ve got the editing phase.
Once you’ve defined these actions and know
what order to tackle them in, you’ll have a much
clearer vision of what should be done right now.
Plus, writing the rough draft of an intro
paragraph is much easier than trying to
write the entire paper all at once.
Another great way to raise Expectancy is to
simply ask for help.
While being able to figure things out on
your own is definitely a useful skill,
there comes a point when refusing to reach
out to someone else only slows you down.
So go to your teacher’s office hours, or
find a friend to form a study group with.
Now when it comes to improving a task’s
Value, there are a few things you can do:
1. Improve the actual reward for
completing the task
2. Improve the experience of doing the work itself
3. Add additional rewards, or mini-rewards
for completing sub-tasks
The best way to improve the first item on the
list is to choose work that’s more fulfilling to you.
Now, you have some amount of control over
this when you’re selecting your classes,
and as you move into your career and build
up more experience, that amount of control
will definitely increase.
However, when you’re a student, there are
still a ton of required classes and things
that you just have to do.
And once you’ve started, it’s pretty difficult to
improve the actual reward – it’s usually set in stone.
If you finish a math assignment, you’ll get the
credit for it and you’ll improve your math skills.
Pretty simple.
But you do have a lot of control over the
other two items.
To make the experience of doing the work itself
more pleasant, you could choose a study location
that you enjoy being in –
like a coffee shop or your favorite spot in
the library.
You can also find a good study music playlist,
work with a friend, or go for a quick walk beforehand
to raise your energy levels before you start.
And additional rewards can further boost your
motivation.
There are several ways to create these, including
gamification, which is the idea of taking elements
from games and applying them to your work.
One of my favorite ways to do this is
with Habitica, an app that essentially turns
productivity into a role-playing game.
Habitica takes all the elements that make
RPGs like Pokemon and Final Fantasy so addicting
– leveling up, experience points, gear – and
it applies them to real life.
I use Habitica as a tool for sticking to my morning
routine and making sure I work out enough,
but there’s also a to-do list function, which you
can use for individual assignments and tasks.
Now, if you don’t want to do that, you can keep
things simpler by just setting up small rewards
for finishing sub-tasks –
like letting yourself watch a movie or go out with
friends after you finish taking notes on a couple of
sources for that research paper you’re working on.
And it’s here that I want to talk about the
concept of low-density fun vs. high-density fun.
See, a lot of students feel like they have too
much work to ever let themselves do anything
fun that takes a significant amount of time.
Maybe you’ve had these kinds of thoughts
yourself, as well.
You think, “Man, I’d really love to play
Horizon Zero Dawn right now, but I should
really use that time to study.”
The irony is that these same students who are
constantly denying themselves that high-density fun
are also spending a lot of time checking
Facebook, or picking new outfits for their
Bitmoji avatars, or browsing dank memes.
These things represent low-density fun; they’re more
attractive than doing work, and it’s easy to convince
yourself that you’re only gonna do them for 5 minutes.
But inevitably you do end up spending a ton
of time on them –
after all, these websites and apps are literally designed
from the ground up to be as addictive as possible –
and what’s worse, they’re not actually fun.
They’re just distractions.
And if you waste all your time on them, you
leave no time for actual, high-density fun that can
act as a true motivator for finishing your work.
So the counterintuitive tip here is that you
NEED to let yourself have this high-density fun.
Give yourself two hours tonight to play that
new video game.
Or join that offroad dirtboarding club you’ve
had your eye on.
When you allow yourself to do these things,
you create anticipation that can be used as
focusing energy for your work.
And that brings us to Impulsiveness.
Now, to be honest, last week’s video on Focus and Concentration provided most of the in-depth tips you’re gonna need to reducing your tendency to give into distractions.
So today I’m just gonna reiterate that your
environment really matters.
If you’re studying in a place where you
have access to distractions, your attention is
more likely to be pulled away by them.
So find a dedicated study spot away from friends
and away from video games.
Sometimes, you might even need to lock
that environment down a bit.
In fact, when I was writing the script for this very
video, I used a program called Cold Turkey to literally
block most of the websites I usually visit.
One thing that the Procrastination Equation
doesn’t cover is the role that willpower plays
in procrastination.
Now, for a long time, it was believed that
willpower was a limited resource –
and that it drained throughout the day as
you made decisions that deviated from the
path of least resistance.
This phenomenon was called ego depletion.
During the past couple of years, though,
the ego depletion theory been challenged by
some conflicting research,
so it’s tough to say whether or not willpower
itself really is this limited pool that you draw
from throughout the day.
Ego depletion controversy aside, though,
your body – and, by extension, your brain –
runs on a cycle of work and rest.
There’s only so much you can do in a day
before you exhaust your mental resources.
Plus, when you put off a challenging assignment
in favor of doing a bunch of easy work first,
it becomes really easy to convince yourself
that you’ve “done enough” for the day once
that easy work is done.
That’s why one of the best ways to beat
procrastination is to just knuckle down and do the
most difficult, unpleasant thing on your to-do list first.
This is often called “eating the frog”
– and as Mark Twain once said:
"If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best
to do it first thing in the morning.
And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's
best to eat the biggest one first."
Now, I’d prefer not to eat any frogs whatsoever.
I’d much rather eat a tomato, which in
Italian would be called a “pomodoro” –
and that happens to be the name of the final
technique we’re going to discuss today.
The Pomodoro Technique is a simple little hack
you can use to stop procrastinating, and all it
requires is a timer and a little piece of paper.
To use it, first decide on one singular task
you’re going to work on.
Then, set your timer for 25 minutes, and work
as hard as you can on that task during that time.
If a distraction comes up, or if you get the
impulse to do something else, write it down on
the piece of paper and then get back to work.
Finally, once the timer goes off, take a 5
minute break and then repeat the process
until you’re ready for a longer break.
This method works so well because the timer
helps you to reframe your task as input-based
rather than output-based.
Instead of feeling like you need to finish an entire
math assignment or that rough draft of your paper,
you know you just need to work for 25 minutes.
This act of reframing cuts down on the initial
resistance you feel towards the task, since 25 minutes
of work doesn't feel like a huge investment of effort.
Additionally, the timer creates an external
motivator.
Instead of relying on your brain to keep
track of how long you should work, you let the
timer do it for you.
It’s the next best thing to having a coach
or drill instructor there to keep you on task
– and for that reason, you need to make
sure you actually use a timer –
or at least a timer app, like tomato
timer.com, or Tide on iOS and Android.
Now there are definitely more techniques for
beating procrastination that we could talk about,
but there comes a point where talking about
productivity becomes a form of procrastination itself.
So now it’s time to take what you’ve learned from
this video, apply it, and get to work. Good luck.
Crash Course Study Skills is filmed in the Dr.
Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio in Missoula, MT,
and it's made with the help of all of these nice people.
If you'd like to keep Crash Course free for
everyone, forever, you can support the series
at Patreon,
a crowdfunding platform that allows
you to support the content that you love.
Thank you so much for your support.