Study Prof

Focus is the big hairy bugbear that stalks many students. Twenty minutes into their two hour study session they find themselves talking or texting or trimming their toenails or doing absolutely anything rather than studying. So how can you deftly dodge the distraction of friends, phones, Facebook, food, etc.? Follow this simple formula (more…)

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Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

~~The “100 Words (or Less)” series gives you a super-short summary of what you need to know about the subject at hand and does it in 100 words or less. Check the link at the bottom for more detailed info about the topic.~~

Break it Down. Take a big task and divide it into smaller sub-tasks. Sub-tasks should be small enough that you won’t procrastinate about them.

Assemble Your Materials. Then there are no excuses not to get started.

Schedule the Sub-Tasks. A date. A start time. An end time.

Commit Publicly. Tell everyone who will listen how you WILL have it done by time X.

Do it. Putting it off? The sub-task was too big. Go back to step one.

Reward Yourself. Small rewards for completing a sub-task. Bigger rewards for a series of sub-tasks. Huge reward for total completion.

See more on beating procrastination.

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Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

The library at the University of Minnesota has provided a nice tool for helping you schedule out all the steps in larger projects such as term papers and presentations. As you may recall from earlier posts, breaking that monstuh project into bite-sized bits is a key way to give procrastination a swift kick in the put-offskies. Take a look here.

P.S. Pay special attention to the different template choices at the bottom of the page that allow you to tailor the results to the type of project your working on.

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Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

Revised from April, 2010 post.

If you can’t procrastinate, you won’t procrastinate.

Obvious, you say? Then why aren’t you making procrastination impossible (or at least scaldingly painful)? Here’s how you can make the P-word so blindingly agonizing that it ain’t even an option.

First, identify that dreaded procrastination-inducing uber-chore. Hint: What were you thinking you should do just BEFORE you started scrubbing out the trash cans and polishing the plastic ware?

Next, chunk it down into pieces that can be done in under an hour. That huge chore no longer looms and you’re less likely to shirk. Instead, you just have an hour’s worth of work to do.

Still procrastinating? Sheesh! You’re as bad as I am! No worries. Just break the hour down into ten minute chunks and commit to doing a single ten minute portion. You can quit after the ten minutes if you like, and you have permission not to even feel guilty about it. Anyone can do ten minutes. Most of us will find that after we’ve done the ten minutes, it’s pretty easy to continue on and do another ten minutes, and another, and another. Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.

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Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

Procrastination Killer Number Five - Mr. Pot o’ Gold AKA Pollyanna

Know what the big difference between morning people and most-definitely-NOT-morning people is? It’s what they think about when they first wake up.

Most-definitely-NOT-morning people start off dreading the long commute to work, mentally moaning about the big project they are supposed to be churning out, indulging in angst over their four-mile run they have to do after class. Grrr.

Little Ms. Morning Glory, on the other hand, starts her day by thinking how great it will be to see her friends at work, dreaming of how good it will feel to get the big project done, imagining how nice it will be to finally fit in that size 4 dress because she’s been so diligent about her exercise. Can’t wait to get started! Rainbows! Unicorns! (more…)

Procrastination Killer Number Four – Mr. Loud Mouth

Stop procrastination cold by Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.

Procrastination Killer Number Three - Mr. Carrotstick AKA Mo Flies

You know the old saw; motivate the donkey by whacking it with a stick on its namesake while dangling a carrot in front of the pointy end. Bad news. You’re the donkey in this scenario. Nevertheless, give some thought to stick and carrot.

How will you whack yourself? With what cheap and ready annoyance can you persecute your mulish self should you dally? (more…)

Procrastination Killer Number Two – Mr. Slice-n-dice

Little strokes fell great oaks. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The journey of a thousand miles begins with …. Don’t make me pull out my beeg aphorisms.

Whatever terrible task is your current bitter procrastination pill, realize you don’t have to do it all right now. You just need to take the next step. Yes, I know every self-help guru worthy of his (more…)

Pain. Punish. Pustule. Proctology. Procrastinate. See how it just fits right in? It’s the cement shoes on your academic career. It’s the shooter on the grassy knoll as your presidential parade putters by. Well someone needs to take procrastination out, blind fold him in front of a brick wall, hand him his last cigarette, and yell, “Fire!” Here’s some stone cold killers who will pull the trigger. (more…)

I’ve written elsewhere about using a daily to-do list in conjunction with a calendar to make your schedule bow down before the awesomeness that is you, but does your to-do list get to “done”? Here are five simple ways to put some serious smack-down on daily tasks by pimping your to-do list.

1. Make sure you can do ‘em. Having a hulking, obnoxious, hairy task sitting on your to-do list glaring at you is a recipe for procrastination. Chop that beast down to size. No single task on your list should take more than an hour. If it takes longer than that, you need to break it down into (more…)