first off, let me state for the record that the act of writing this post is complete and total procrastination from current organic chemistry cue cards and mechanisms. i have a midterm on friday and my usual (although sometimes plodding) motivation has completely flown out the window.

i would rather write the exam RIGHT NOW and get a barely passing grade, than continue to review material for another 48 hours and do well. that is a very very bad sign. and extremely unusual for me. a lot of people use the statement “i work better under pressure” to rationalize their procrastination. i just feel like i’m analyzing cracks and mortar in a brick wall in front of me instead of looking for the nearby door…

i’m not saying i never hit this brick wall. every exam – whether measly midterm or fatal final – has a brick wall somewhere on the horizon. i often call it my “saturation point” because it will slam up against me after countless hours of review and recall. over several years of experimentation, i have come to trust it as a reliable indicator that i know at least 90% of the material well enough to kick the exam’s butt all the way back to the prof’s office.

so when i sit down at my desk to start another hour of re-re-re-review and looking at my notes for the bazillionth time makes me want to throw up… i know i’m good to go.

BUT, i have only spent a handful of hours on friday’s organic chem midterm and there’s bile in the back of my throat. how does one swallow it down and push on?

even though they don’t currently seem to be working, i thought i’d share my techniques for pushing past procrastination and back into productivity.

1. take a break
if you feel like you need a break, you’re probably right. but do something constructive with it. i don’t like to add any new non-essential information during my short study breaks so things like television and reading are out of the question.

instead, go for a walk or have a shower or clean your toilet or wash the dishes. repetitive actions that don’t require a lot of thought are the best for me. they become meditative and my brain has a chance to coalesce all the important info that was slipping away minutes earlier.

2. take a nap
i’m not advocating 3 hours in the middle of the day, but 10 minutes around 2pm does wonders for me.

3. work on something else
my current example is this organic chem midterm. i just couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around the cue cards and mechanisms, so i decided to work on this week’s lab exercise instead. it’s something related to what i should be studying and will need to be done eventually anyway.

4. force-feed yourself
this is my last-ditch extreme measure if the above tactics fail miserably. it is also what i’m going to be doing about 5 minutes from now when i press the “publish” button for this blog post.

the key here is small mouthfuls. force-feeding large amounts will only make you throw it all back up (and i think we were trying to avoid bile in the first place). spend 10 minutes studying and 10 minutes on cleaning the toilet (or going for a walk or whatever). wash, rinse, repeat. repeat. repeat.

once i’ve realized i can keep it down, i’ll bump the studying time up to 15 minutes… then 20… then 30… still with 10 minutes off in between for something else. soon enough, several hours have passed and i’ve actually accomplished some studying!

and with a sparkling toilet to boot!