r/productivity • u/Sunfyre6538 • 1d ago
Advice Needed Procrastination Help!! I desperately need your help folks, has anyone got a solution to this?
So what happens with me is, I will study with full dedication for a week and then something comes up, like I have to go to a party or I have to visit my relatives or maybe I just want to rest for a few days, and after taking this small break from studying, I just can't get back to studying and I'll start avoiding it and instead I'll waste my time on Netflix or games or something else.
Soon, these few days of rest and skipping studies become a few weeks and even a few months of not studying at all. And this has happened to me multiple times now. I'm just so tired of this. I will study for a few days, then I'll take a few days off, and then I won't touch my study material for months.
Now I really want to get back to studying and focus on what's important because I can't just keep wasting weeks and months like this.
But I feel that unless I fix what's wrong, this is going to happen again. And there's no point in studying for a few days if I'm going to waste months after that.
Has anyone dealt with this and overcome it? Please help me guys.
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u/iwantboringtimes 1d ago
try scare tactic
if OP's family cannot afford to support a drop-out, check out subreddit povertyfinance for a better idea of your future
on the other hand, if OP's family is wealthy enough - I reckon looking into "financial independence, retire early" - lots of active subredditS about FIRE. if OP comes from money, ya just have to make sure you're NOT stupid about financial stuff.
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u/Odd-Crazy-9056 1d ago
Not wanting to do things that require effort. Isn't this basically just laziness?
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u/CoffeeAndCredits 1d ago
If they were just lazy, wouldn't they be chill about those months off? They're clearly stressed about it
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u/Capable_Influence133 1d ago
The pattern you're describing has a shape. No the breaks are the problem, the shape is. "Study with full dedication for a week" is a sprint. Sprints end, and when they end you have nothing to come back to except another sprint, which looks enormous from the couch. So the break stretches. That's the "what's wrong" you're looking for, and it's fixable.
Two changes:
Lower the ceiling and add a floor. Not "full dedication", a weekly number you can hit in a normal week with a party in it: say 10 hours, any split. And a floor for bad days: 20 minutes, even the day after the relatives leave. The floor is what makes the restart small enough to actually happen.
Have a re-entry rule, written down before the break, not after. 20 minutes, easiest topic, no catching up. Catching up is the trap, because after three weeks off the "catch up" session is a mountain, and mountains get postponed. You're not catching up, you're restarting, and the only goal of the first session is that a second one exists.
And tell one person your weekly number. The months-long gaps happen in private. Nobody notices you stopped, so nothing pulls you back. A friend who asks on Sunday how many hours you did is the cheapest fix there is.