Minimise your HSC workload today

The underlying cause of procrastination is essentially that we find work an unpleasant and arduous prospect

However, while you’re probably never really going to ever get really excited to write yet another Hamlet essay, breaking down your work into manageable chunk sand coming up with a concrete plan can really minimise the chances you’ll put it off for longer than you should.

The goal here is to create a way to break your work into small manageable chunks. Trying to make an unpleasant, difficult essay seem inviting might be an impossible challenge, but you can take the edge off by setting small milestones and completing them sequentially rather than doing it (or putting off doing it) in one go. The aim is to learn to view what you have to do not as one huge, hours-long block of work, but instead as a series of small, doable tasks that you can chip away at, maintaining your motivation.

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Think of the following example: say it’s a Monday, and you have an English essay due the following Monday, and also need to complete two 3 Unit Maths past papers by the end of the week for an upcoming exam. A poor approach would be to view each of these things as something that has to be done in one go. This makes the work seem much more challenging than it really is, and makes you more likely to put it off.

Instead, consider breaking down the work into small chunks and writing a specific, structured to-do list like the following:

Monday

Write essay introduction (first 400 words) and draft body paragraph structure

Complete Multiple Choice Questions and Questions 1-5 of Maths Past Paper #1

Tuesday

Finish Maths Past Paper #1

Write draft of body paragraphs for essay

Wednesday

Proof-read essay. Make necessary adjustments to thesis and ideas.

Complete Multiple Choice Questions and Questions 1-5 of Maths Past Paper #2

Thursday

Finalise essay: write completion, re-read and edit

Friday

Hand in essay

Finish Maths Past Paper #2

This is just a simplified example, but the point isn’t the content – the point is that you actually write down and set aside time for what you need to get done. If you don’t formalise this allocation of time and resources, it can be very easy to pretend you can put it off; once you come up with a concrete plan and physically document it, it’s much harder to procrastinate.

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