Ever since I was a kid back in elementary school, I get into a slump around this time of the year. My teachers used to call my mom and ask her if everything was okay because instead of being the hard-working and devoted student I usually was, I was daydreaming and procrastinating. Today, I am a motivated and extremely organized student (and yes, I have shamelessly posted my agenda on Instagram more than once). Yet, that laziness from my childhood still hits me hard at this time of the year.
Once a year, without exception, I will call my mom and when she asks about my schoolwork, I will inevitably respond with “yeah, my assignments are piling up, but I just cannot seem to get started with any of them.” She reminds me that this happens every year – but that does not make it easier to avoid the slump or even work through it.
So how does one beat the second semester slump? Between the cloudy and cold weather, the stress over figuring out summer or post-graduate plans, and the dozens of assignments piling up in the same week (how do professors manage to do that every year? #conspiracy), it may seem impossible to do anything than binge Netflix and stay in sweatpants. Since sometimes getting started is the hardest part, here are a few of my tips to beat the second semester slump:
1. Put pen to paper
Write down everything you need to do. It may look like a lot but it will feel so good crossing each item off. Like, so good.
2. Break it down
Break those big tasks down into smaller ones. For example, if you have an essay due, that could become “write thesis,” “make outline,” and “jot down major points and supporting arguments” so that writing the whole essay does not seem so daunting.
3. What are you doing today?
Plan what you want to get down for each day, based on the smaller tasks from #2. Say on Monday, you will write a thesis, and on Tuesday you will be making your outline to support that thesis. Since you cannot do Tuesday’s work without doing Monday’s, it creates an urgency to JUST DO IT.
4. 5-minute rule
Pick something off your list – and vow to spend 5 minutes on it and then stop. Yup, you will work for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES and then back to Netflix. That is it. But you won’t want to stop working. The reason this works is because chances are that once you have started, you will gain some momentum and end up working longer than five minutes without realizing. And hey, if you do stop at 5 minutes, then at least you got started and have somewhere to begin next time.
5. Get out
Whether you need some fresh air or a change of scenery, get up, stretch those legs, and then get back to it. Sometimes the best places to work are in a library or at a coffee shop, so that you feel ashamed if you linger on Facebook too long or open Netflix to binge watch Friends for the 17th time.
These are some of my best tips, but it is important to remember to not get sucked into any of these. Yes, you can write lists forever and keep breaking small tasks down into smaller ones, but then you are still procrastinating. These steps are to motivate you, they are not meant to act as distractions or let you feel accomplished that you are “on the right track” without doing any real work. The second semester slump is very real – just remember that the hardest part is getting started.