How to not procrastinate and study like a pro

By Haya Panjwani

Apple calendar or a physical handheld planner — get one.

Writing down things, whether it be assignments, projects, reading assignments or someone’s birthday coming up, a planner will put all of your upcoming items in one place. Every time you open your planner, you’ll know what’s coming next.

Once you have your planner, it would definitely be useful to jot down your deadlines. But not your actual deadlines, fake deadlines. More often than not, your professors are going to cram every major project into the same week or two. It’s best to get ahead on that action and start setting fake deadlines, so when the real deadlines approach, you aren’t overwhelmed.

It would also help to set minideadlines. Let’s say you have an interview based project where you have to speak to several people over the course of the semester to create this big project as your final grade. Set mini deadlines throughout the semester so you aren’t overwhelmed when your professor tells you the project is due a week ahead of time. Write down the date you plan to reach out and the date range you’d like to conduct your interview — it’ll make your life much easier.

But it’s not just long-term tasks and deadlines you should be looking at, try time-blocking to meet faster, more urgent deadlines. Time blocking is essentially jotting down all the times of the day you’re awake and productive and assigning a task at each hour or half our interval.

If time blocking is not your thing though, try the pomodoro method. This is where you set a timer for 25 minutes to work on a task, and then take a five minute break. After four cycles of this, take a 30 minute break.

You don’t have to stick to these methods. Give them a try, and if they don’t work, there’s plenty of other methods out there that may be better fit for you.

Sometimes, the environment you’re in plays a large role too. Do you like to study in a quiet little room on your own? Try the study corrals throughout the library. Prefer a louder environment where you can blast music in your headphones and no one distracts you? Try the student centers or a lecture hall.

There’s plenty of places throughout campus, so you can find an environment that works right for you, but it’ll definitely take some trial and error in the early weeks of your college career.

College will seem daunting at first, but with a little organization, your worries will be brought down a lot.