I have a procrastination problem that probably trumps everyone elses. What to do?

I don ‘t mean to be harsh, but this is my honest answer to your question. School is probably the last time in your life before retirement that it is all about you. Nothing you do is for your teachers’ sake. You might think it’s for your parents, but it isn’t. I think you need to examine your reason for being in school and then get serious about aligning your priorities with it. It is not unusual or abnormal to put things off and stall on doing your work, but it is self-defeating. Maybe you’d rather be somewhere other than in school.

what Jeruba said ^^
also, I remind myself what opportunities I will be losing if I don’t buckle down and do well in my studies (and alternately, what I will be gaining if I do do well).

No you’re totally right @Jeruba. But I do know it’s not about my teachers or my parents… I want to be in school to really learn .. god I don’t know. I feel like it’s too late for anything and I just feel hopeless.. in doing my assignment and becoming a good student. It’s my last year of studies.

I know I am capable of more but I guess I’m afraid of what that will entail.. and at the same time my mind is full of self-defeating thoughts. Any speck of encouragement I get always gets knocked down by negative thinking. ... I have issues…

I think you need to figure out why, exactly, it’s pointless. Even if it turns up to be something ‘silly’. I think that’s where the key is.

It’s never too late! Now… turn off the computer and get crackin’! :)

i think the fact you realize you have that problem its a start, now you have to be true to yourself and ask if its just your excuse of getting on the computer, it seems all this negativity and hopelessness your speaking of is coming from something other than procrastination.my advice is to try to do something you enjoy with friends a pet ect and set a time to study after you have had a nice time doing something you enjoy post notes around you of what you what to do when your done with your studies find a way to let all the negative things not be so big make the positive bigger post places you want to travel to ect.you can over come this and you know you can as you say you are on your last year of studies so you have already accomplished a lot and there is more where that came from.keep your head up.

I don’t know what your family life is like but if you were raised in chaos, that sort of madness begins to feel normal to you. Then you do things like wait until the last sec to do things because the madness of the moment feels good and like home.

The other bad habit I had was to sabotage myself and my endeavors because that way I never had to face a failure. I would rather not take the chance of actually trying and failing by simply ensuring my failure from the start.

Just a few of the pitfalls I created in my life. Better get some counseling to see what is going on inside your skull and why you are behaving the way you are.

Poor time management skills is the number one reason why people flunk out of college. It’s not that they can’t do the work, it’s that they either aren’t immature enough to be in a situation where they need to manage their own time and workload, or their high school situation or parents denied them the opportunity to learn from failure by making sure their work got turned in on time.

The good news is that time management is a relatively easy skill to learn, and poor grades can be a great motivator. It’s probably too late to salvage this semester’s grades, but it might be helpful to check with the guidance office at school and ask for help learning time management.

Do you think that perhaps you really don’t want to be in school? Are you paying for college yourself?

Holy mother of pearl that happens to me to! I’m awake right now because I put off studying for a big test I have today. Also I haven’t finished my Latin. :/

Also I don’t know how to not procrastinate :(

Oh join the club.

Reading @Jeruba and @Augustlan’s and the other answers reminded me of how much I love you guys – smart, sensitive and witty. If only all my friends in “RL” were like the jellies. Sigh. (The sigh was for Jeruba – what a babe!)

I never do anything that can be done later. Makes me feel like I actually am important, even if it is for a short period of time. :)

It sounds to me like you may be suffering from depression. Is there a counselor at your school? I think you should get to the reasons why you’re feeling “hopeless”, like things are “pointless”, and why you have “self-defeating” & “negative thoughts” as these may go beyond your feelings about your studies.

Eh, worry about it later. There’s always tomorrow.

I go through this all the time. I typically leave myself two hours to write ~10 page research papers and less time for fewer pages. It’s not a huge problem but lately (this weekend, I mean) I had an essay and a project due by email and I did neither. It’s not as if I was busy or distracted. I even isolated myself in my room, but I often ended up lying face down on the bed and falling asleep regardless of whether I was tired.

I guess I hit a motivational wall, as it were, and now I have to ask for extensions to complete the assignments. I don’t know why this happened. If I get past it I will let you know how. For now I’d just note that usually Fluther is more pointless than the work you’re assigned in college. And while it’s easy to try to be ‘above’ the work and say This is pointless, etc., in the end you’re still just avoiding your responsibilities and it’s not good.

I am the same way. I have yet to start a paper that was due last Tuesday.

I’m a senior in college and have somehow maintained a B average procrastinating this badly the whole time. My trick is to get “in” with professors. I charm them, and they want me to do well. I also talk to them about what’s going on in my life that makes homework the last priority.
For example, my paper due last Tuesday didn’t get done because I had a show. I told my professor, who happens to be a patron of the arts, and not only did he give me til today, he came to my concert.

Tears also help, I have visited many professor’s office hours, broken down, and told them that [this] semester’s been really hard, and I have a lot on my plate, and it’s hard to balance everything, etc.

Two years ago I literally stopped going to a class. I didn’t withdraw, I just stopped going (9:00 AM? No thanks.) and stopped reading and everything. At the end of the year I was pretty much screwed. But I talked to the prof, gave her the sob story, and she let me email her everything over the summer. I came out with a B+. I feel bad about that one, since I really didn’t deserve it, but I would have lost my scholarship otherwise.

So this is not a suggestion on how to stop procrastinating, but rather how to get away with it:) I wish I had seen this question when I was up at 3:30 this morning/last night not writing my paper.

I should probably go back and read the other answers to solve my own problem.

Don’t work at home. I can’t get any work done at my house, there’s too much at home I’d rather be doing. I actually used to get a lot done in the dining hall. I am looking forward to going home home for thanksgiving, because I have decided that I’m going to make up a lot of work. Even being away from my daily routine, hopefully, will be enough to make for better motivation. Try working somewhere totally crazy. Also, is there anything you can do on the paper without your computer? If I bring my computer, I end up on .Fluther. If I outline it on paper, something gets done.

Jobs after college that come with decent salaries come with project deadlines and due dates that have to be met on time. With some jobs, if you can’t meet deadlines, you either end up in dead-end roles with no advancement or you get fired. Other people’s work can be dependent on your completing your work when you’re supposed to.

Not being able to meet deadlines is a good reason not to be hired.

Can I tell you tomorrow?

Is it fear of success? How about if you put in lots of effort and it still comes out lousy? If you procrastinate, you are setting yourself up for failure which may feel more comfortable to you.

A good way to sneak up on it is to just “freewrite” – jot down your ideas on the topic as they come to you and worry about editing, shaping and revising later.

Honestly…I could write fluther answers forever. If someone wrote a Fluther question “How did Handel manifest the Doctrine of Affection in his early Baroque arias?” I would accidentally write my whole paper as an answer. We’ll have to trick each other into getting work done:)
I’d count a “Great Answer” as an A