Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

Looking for some advice and motivation to start early and form a lifelong habit

For those of you who have been reading my posts I got through the 9 exam week and I did just fine. Thanks for the tips and advice. I'm finding now that I am starting my studying earlier and like I said before have scaled my procrastination back alot. But I want to do more, you see I want to be able to study even when I don't feel like exams are that close. For instance, I have two big exams coming up in a month. Now I know I could leave them both till a week or two before and probably do well on both. However, I feel like I really want to start learning material in even deeper and more efficient ways. See I want to be able to set aside a period of studying everyday, and commit two hours to studying. This way in a month I'll have done 60 hours of studying, as opposed to me simply cramming in 20 or 25 hours of studying the two weeks before a block of exams. However, I find that most of the time, when I get to the library and I sit down. One month feels simply too far away, I don't feel motivated because there isn't any immediate pressure from exams. And then I end up surfing the internet or doing something unrelated. 

I guess my big goal is to form a lifelong habit of doing a little bit of work everyday regardless about how I feel (lazy, happy, angry, sad, etc, towards the topic or my life). And I want this habit to really stick. Any advice guys on how to work towards this goal?

I welcome all kinds of advice, but I would really appreciate it if people could give me personal stories about how they improved their own habits, etc, and tips advice.

thanks 

i dont have any advice ;)

lol. then why am i posting :P

(cuz i like all you folks ;))

habits haven't stuck for me. even habits i've had for months, even 1-2years, they'll just stop one day. Dunno why, but i sense it has to do with this disease.

in lieu of habits, however, i have...well maybe i dont know. I dont know that i can totally explain how come i'm doing better with things than i used to. Well, i DO believe a Higher Power is helping me. I think that's a big part of it.

thinking about it a little, i dont have new habits. I have new ideas.

1. i spend the first 25 years of my life trying to figure out what's wrong with me. that consumed huge amounts of time. Now i just accept my disease and work on managing it. That's a lot more efficient.

2. break it down is a hugely effective tool for me. Nearly every day, i face a task that i cannot face, and i break it down, because i CAN face just the very first mini step of it. that gets me going multiple times a day.

3. this forum and espeically chat. almost every day, and sometimes 20 times in a day, i can't face things, and i come here and catch up and chat and express what's going on, and it almost always helps. Seeing other struggle and/or overcome changes it for me, somehow.

4. when i get in that deepest darkest place, and i see no way out, my faith has taught me to count on the fact that God is going to rescue me. Rather than fret and dispair, making my blackest pit even blacker, i just ride out the darkness, with the tiniest sliver of hope that somehow, some way, it's going to get better. And it always does. Somehow, some way.

well, if you're looking for habits maybe none of that is applicable. Take what what you can use, leave the rest, as they say in AA. But for me, that was a good opportunity to assess what's going on with me, so i hope you dont mind me cluttering up your post, and thanks! :D

the touch of the master's hand: http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/1898#comment-27748

fall down seven times, get up eight - japanese proverb

bookmarks

actually, those are a kind of habit

i was thinking about this whole thing and i realized those "ideas" i mentioned before are a kind of habit. A mental habit. I am in the habit of thinking that way, and responding to situations that way. I didnt realize that.

I didnt notice at first cuz when i think of habit i think of, get out of bed, brush teeth, shower, dress, breakfast, maybe go to the gym, have quiet time, got to work, have lunch, pay the bills every wed night, go shopping every sat morn, those kind of things. Time based things.

But just like people do those kinds of time-based things semi-automatically, those patterns of thinking i realize i do semi-automatically. They dont happen at the same time every day, or even the same number of times from day to day, but they are a new kind of instinctive reaction, which is semi-automatic kinda like a habit.

Thanks for letting me share :)

the touch of the master's hand: http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/1898#comment-27748

fall down seven times, get up eight - japanese proverb

bookmarks

Building a new habit

Have you checked out the Zen Habits blog by Leo Babauta?   He has a lot of good suggestions about building habits, much better suggestions than I could give :)

But here's one suggestion anyway and this does come from leo:  If you want to build a daily habit, start with doing the task for 5 minutes.   Every day.   At this point you just want to establish the habit of doing it every day.   Once the 5 minute habit is established, begin to make it longer.  

Jo

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.  Try again.  Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett

5 mins :)

I like that, I started a 'new habit/discipline' of writing every day for an hour (not all at once, broken up) and I only lasted three days!!!! Maybe now I'll give it another try, but starting with five minutes and building it up in increments...

thanks