October has arrived, and with school work picking up and the leaves falling down, it can be hard to balance fall festivity with productivity. Here are three all-too-familiar procrastination situations and their achievable solutions to facilitate the fall of your dreams.
Excited to be hard-working city girls in their gorgeous fall element, my friends and I will soon take to our favorite scenic coffee shop so that we can bring the aesthetic to life. One by one we gather in front of someone’s dorm, each friend arriving minutes apart from the next. We enjoy a social stroll to the coffee shop where we weigh the pros and cons of every item on the menu and then resume our riveting conversation over our choice of drinks or pastries. Eventually, I ready myself for “the grind,” and take out my preexisting to-do list, the materials to complete all of my assignments and headphones that will fill with oh-so-studious classical piano. When one friend suddenly has to rush to their next commitment, we all pack up and go. I barely touched my first assignment, but I did successfully predict the orders of two random customers. And I feel proud; like a boss, I woke up at 7:30 a.m. to get things done, and when I head back to campus it is already 12:00 p.m..
If you recognize this pattern in yourself, accept your tendency to study performatively, and then start saying no to coffee shop study dates. Combining your homework sessions with social outings can create a false sense of progress that convinces you that you have done enough work for the day. Instead, try waking up early to be independently productive for a full hour, and then attend a brief, high-quality coffee date where your friends and the orders of random customers can receive your undivided attention.
With scattered classes and club meetings, the college schedule leads to many inconveniently placed breaks. Being the responsible planner that I am, I make the calculations to determine what I can accomplish in 45 minutes. 45 minutes minus the 20 minutes I need to walk to my next class leaves me with 25 minutes to do the first assignment on my to-do list. But it would actually probably take me an hour to complete…so I don’t have time for homework right now and scroll through social media instead. The truth is, I do not need 20 minutes to get to my class – I only need 10, and 35 minutes is plenty of time to make a dent in the deck. If this feels relatable, I urge you to change your standard of productivity: you do not need to fully complete an assignment for your homework session to be considered productive. Working attentively for any amount of time is productive. Even if it is just to brainstorm a paper response or recognize that you need calculus assistance, it brings you one step closer to a fully crossed off to-do list and one step closer to a full free day of enjoying fall festivities.
There are all sorts of options: a walk in the park, an apple-picking day trip or hammocking on the quads. Striving to achieve the goal of enhanced productivity, it is easy to pass these up, and plan on a full day of homework. It’s time for another reality check: you are not about to do homework from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. Say yes to the fall festivities, and use them to guide your productive scheduling. Four hours of homework paired with a fulfilling mind break will cross off more on your to-do list than six hours of straight studying. Above all else, you deserve the fun and relaxation – regardless of what season it is.