stop procrastinating

I haven’t had any choice about procrastinating lately, as if I don’t get started on homework right away I have to sacrifice sleep for it, because I’m short on time.
This is a very motivating thing. Sleep is sort of sacred to me, so if I have to stay up past 10:15 it had better be damn important or it’s just not happening.
It’s getting easier and easier to buckle down, too. It helps to have a sort of routine that allows you to get things done, making work automatic, almost. For me, it’s get home, exercise, practice music, eat dinner/read/clean a little, homework. I still can’t just sit down right after school and do schoolwork, my brain is too tired, but I feel like my routine has eliminated all of the goofing off and wasting time to avoid work, so I may be ready to mark this as done soon.

School started up again two days ago, and although I haven’t gotten any serious homework yet, I’ve been making an effort to get a jump on some of my harder classes in order to make the start of the year easier on myself. For example, I read (well, speed-read) the first chapter and a half for APUSH, so the weekend’s vocabulary assignment is going to be a breeze. Then, some time this weekend I need to review verb conjugation for Spanish, because I swear I forgot everything over the summer.
The true test of this goal is going to be my Chemistry class, because in my school the honors Chemistry classes follow an independent study sort of pace…it’s apparently really easy to get distracted and fall behind, but my plan is to spend my class time on labs/tests and do the reading outside of class unless I can manage to get ahead.

I’ve been really good about this goal lately, but mainly because I don’t really have all that much I have to do, because I’m on summer vacation. I took a summer school class, so that was a big step towards not procrastinating in the long term. (Doing something I didn’t really want to so I could do something I did later.) Also, I’ve been working on my goals a little bit every day, but I’m not always great about getting it done *right away, although it always gets done.
For fall, I decided to let myself have a bit of a clearer schedule. Sometimes, when I’m really busy, I’ll procrastinate because I feel like I’m too worn out. (For example, get up at 5:30, do school and extracurricular stuff until 6 or 7, and then be too tired to be responsible about the 1-2 hours of homework left.) This way, I’ll only have 4-5 hours a week of non-school rehearsals/lessons, and I’ll be able to get schoolwork done without having a ton of stress.

I’ve got finals tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and I was thinking about studying really hard. Then I remembered that the way our grades are weighted (80% classwork, 20% final) I’d have to get a C on my final to drag even my lowest grade below an A. (I have a 93% in Spanish, currently.)
The motivation gods have not been acknowledging my prayers. But, with my last 30 minutes before bed, I will force myself to think about the essay portion I know is going to be on there. Childhood story with mixed use of preterite and imperfect tenses, you will be lukewarmly attacked!

Forced myself to stay off the internet for a few days. I actually studied and worked toward some of my musical goals. I got halfway through a 300 page novel. And my bedroom? Messy, but cleaner than usual.
So I dunno how I ended up online today. But I think maybe I should just walk away and study for my Spanish final. (Really, I definitely should. But procrastination is so much fun!)

So, tomorrow is the due date for a rather large research paper. Apparently, when the paper was assigned I felt like being a complete troll, so I changed the due date on all of my information to today, and wrote it in block letters on my calender.
And I totally forgot I did it. I honestly thought that today was the due date, so last night when I got home from a social outing, I went to town finishing up the final revisions on the paper, and got to bed by 11. When I showed up to class everyone was like “Wow, you’re really disciplined for getting done a day early” and I was like “WHAAAAAAAT??”
I guess it worked, because I got the chance to fix all of my exhaustion-induced typos and formatting errors. Clean copy, being turned in tomorrow. I’m not sure that I could pull it off again, I guess the key is forgetting that you’ve done it, and I’m just too proud of myself now to do that. It was pretty crazy though. xD

I’ve completed 10 items off of the list I made for myself. For the next 3 days of break I have 23 items, some in various stages of completion. I don’t expect to finish all of it, since it was basically everything I could think of that I should do, but I’ll probably get done with half of it. I could do 8 items a day, or less if I did some more tonight…:p

My natural inclination is to try to be productive over school breaks, and so I’ve created a 30+ item to-do list for my break. It includes things I need to do for school that could be put off but shouldn’t, things for my goals, and little household chores. I’m just going to pick things off the list based on what I feel like doing that day and hope I make a dent in it over break. :)

Did a really super job of ignoring this goal and put off two essays until the night before. Fortunately, both were mostly done so I didn’t have to stay up all night or anything, but my poor planning means they weren’t my best.
Lesson Learned. Maybe.

I’m stuck in this perpetual head-cold I caught from my brother, which is just bad enough to suck but not bad enough to warrant staying home to properly rest. As a result, I didn’t exactly spend this weekend productively, but I guess I can make today count. On the menu:
cleaning up my bedroom, including laundry, outlining an essay, researching another essay, revising a paragraph, researching Samurai, and cramming for pit orchestra and band practice. I may or many not be staying home from a rehearsal because I don’t want to drop off from the Nyquil I plan to take after I get this stuff done.