I can’t get started! (Part 1)

Procrastination is a friend and an enemy. First of all, calm down, it really is OK to procrastinate. Some people work better under a bit of stress and sometimes those people have to manufacture it themselves. It’s fine! There are two situations you have to look for, though. 1) You procrastinate too much (it leads to lost sleep, lost fun, self-recrimination, and poorer work.) 2) You’ve lost all motivation and are replacing it with plain old stress.

Two is a tough one because it’s often a sign of burnout. Burnout might mean that you have been doing 1) so much for so long that your brain and body have given up hope. The answers are the same as for 1), but it will probably take longer for you to start feeling good about life again.

So what to do when you find yourself dealing with a perfectly reasonable bit of procrastination gone awry? You stayed up all night to get it done, then slept through three classes and two meals, and now you are really behind and you really feel lousy, and there is a test in the morning but you can’t sleep because you were in bed until 4PM and now you are risk of sleeping through your alarm or getting no sleep at all before the test.

If that’s you, the first thing you have to do is make sleep nonnegotiable. I know, you are special. You have a unique mind. You are the one true blossom who really and truly thinks more brilliant thoughts when you are too tired to dress yourself properly. You are a very special snowflake. I hate to break it to you, but that might be a hallucination resulting from your sleep deprivation. You are just a regular person. Now go to sleep.