Procrastination. It is the curse of students everywhere, whether online or not. It haunts you for the rest of your life. It takes control of your inner being and transforms you into a creature that you would rather not be. OK….it’s October and I’ve already eaten too much candy corn. But seriously, procrastination can make or break your college experience. Putting off your schoolwork until the deadline is looming can kill you. It makes for sloppy work. It doesn’t allow time for revision or reflection. It usually ends up eating into your “other” time as you try to steamroll the project through at the last minute. The sound you hear in the background is my wife laughing out loud right now. She is wondering why I, of all people, am talking about not procrastinating. I’ll deal with that issue later.
Why do we put things off? Often times it is because we are overwhelmed. It might be that we are overwhelmed with the task at hand. It might be that everything ELSE in our life is so frantic that we can’t figure out how to work in one more thing. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step… yeah, so does falling off a mountain. How do you begin? Once again, it all comes down to organization. Henry has provided some excellent organization advice in several of his postings. I really enjoyed this one about setting goals. You have to find what works for you, though. I’ve already shared with you my problem with using things like Franklin Day Planners. (I’m hoping that if I keep mentioning their name that they might send me some freebies and an instruction booklet that will get me fired up.) What DOES work for me? I’ve got a couple of things that I can share with you.
So here is one of my favorite organizational things to do. (As if someone could actually HAVE a favorite organizational thing) Online learning, by its very nature, involves lots of writing. I have taken online courses from a couple of different universities and they have been fairly consistent with their written assessments (as good instruction should be). They have almost across the board given you the rubric by which the writing is scored. WGU provides Task Aids, as well. To help keep me on track, one of the first things that I do is to create a template for the project. I use the rubric to set up headings and subheadings. Then, and here is my favorite part, I use the Reviewing feature in Microsoft Word to make Comments to myself. (OpenOffice3, a freeware version of an Office Suite that is actually quite good, calls them Notes). Here is an article from TechLearning that shows more about doing this. As I go through the coursework or readings, I add additional notes to myself. When I am ready to actually start writing the darned thing, most of my work is already done. It is, of course, the “actually start writing” part where MY procrastination kicks in. But I at least have my template ready to go!
Information overload can also keep you from moving forward. My school district provides an abundance of resource materials for me as a teacher. A plethora of plans. A cornucopia of curriculum materials. Too much almost. Having been out of the general classroom for almost 10 years, things have changed. It is difficult to even know where to begin looking for the material that I need as I wade through my many options. I find myself freezing up sometimes. The same thing can apply to your online education materials. You’ve got the whole WWW thing going for you along with any required texts. I have found that, for me, it makes it easier to NOT have all of my materials for the quarter/semester/term/course piled up around me in one place. It is rare that I need them all for any given project. I pull out just the ones that I need and then put them back when I am done. (Alright…I PLAN on putting them all back when I am done…but I’ll do it later.)
And finally, my most important suggestion on how to avoid procrastination. When everything else is not working there is one more plan. I’ m still working on the details of how it will work. I’ll get back to you on it. Next month. Maybe.
