Developing Self Discipline

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art by blindthesun.

having self-discipline while studying can be immensely helpful, and it’ll help you get over procrastination and motivation slumps. here are some tips for developing more self-discipline! ahhh this post was kinda hard to write because i’m still trying to build up my own self-discipline! hopefully, some of this will help you guys out!

remove all temptations

yes, it’s so so tempting to check tumblr and youtube and twitter and instagram and whatnot while studying. a simple way to fix that is to log off all of your social media accounts, put your phone away and out of your sight while studying, and setting up a website blocker if you need to. chrome has quite a lot of extensions regarding website blockers, so try searching for one that you like.

be ready to study

get all of your materials out, fill up a bottle of water, make yourself a study snack if you want to, make sure your work space is clean and ready to go, etc. it can be disruptive to your own work flow if you suddenly find that you desperately need something halfway across your house during your study session.

don’t wait for “the perfect moment”

waiting for “the right time” and “the perfect moment” can be incredibly detrimental to your own discipline. it’s nice to spend a lot of time digging through a motivation tag and you feel very light and happy to start working. however, that’s not helpful if you’ve spent too much time in that and not enough time to get your own work done. get a start on your own work and try to finish it efficiently so you can get back to whatever you were doing before :-)

don’t make excuses

this is kinda like the one before it, but stop making excuses to yourself unless they’re genuine. i know that other things in your life may come first, and that’s completely fine! just remember to be honest with yourself and stop making up flimsy excuses to push off something that you don’t want to do.

schedule things.

good time management = good self-discipline :) keep track of all the tasks that you need to do that day, and try to finish all of them in the same day as well. don’t overload your schedule though; be realistic in your planning. you don’t have to cover 15 chapters in one day!!

start whatever you need to do at that time

by pushing it off, you’re inviting yourself into the dreaded loop of procrastination. if you’ve already fallen into procrastination, force yourself to start the task for at least 10 minutes. after 10 minutes, check to see if you’ve gotten into a nice and steady work flow or if you’re still just worn-out and tired and don’t want to do it at all. if it’s the first one, smile and continue on! you’ve succeeded! if it’s the second one, maybe it’s because you’re too tired and worn out. take a 5 minute break and then try again.

finish what you start

it’s fairly simple: try to finish whatever you start that day. don’t push it off or wait til the next day to finish it.

make up your own deadline

by establishing your own deadline, you set yourself a time frame to finish something in. this pushes you to actually do the work in that amount of time. also, it’s really helpful especially when working on projects. you can split up the task into separate chunks and make deadlines for each “chunk.” it makes it a lot easier to handle too!

take advantage of mornings

i absolutely detest mornings, but waking up early can be a huge advantage. by waking up early, you’re strengthening your own self-discipline as well as gaining a large amount of time to study and work! besides, it feels great to have a whole night to yourself if you finish all of your tasks in the morning!!

remember to forgive yourself and remember to take breaks!

not everyone can be hyper productive forever. people have their ups and downs, and you’re no exception. don’t beat yourself up over not finishing x amount of tasks that day or for having too many long breaks or whatever. it’s good to shake yourself back into shape, but please please don’t go overboard and despair about your failures. it’s so easy to guilt yourself and spiral away from your built-up discipline ;; the longer you’re off, the harder it is to get back up and keep going. the key thing is: you are trying and your efforts are validated and you have made some progress with your self-discipline and studying. forgive yourself and move on.

remember: don’t get discouraged the longest journey starts with a single step (◕ᴗ◕✿)

hope this helped and good luck! if you’d like to request a post, go here and if you’d like to see more helpful posts, go here!! thanks :)

Welp

Today is not a very good day. I'm starting to wonder why my Fridays are always filled with inconveniences and problems; it's borderline comical at this point.

got stomach flu last night

was unable to attend my classes today

was unable to attend my CET Review

the script i wrote got lost

I'm really scared for the Fridays to come, but we all know Fridays are inevitable as long as I'm alive. 😂

Hope you're having better days than me! Hit me up if you want to rant, share, or just talk about stuff!

small studyblrs reblog!

if you’re a small studyblr (<100 followers) and active, reblog this post! i want to queue original content from my fellow small studyblrs

What are your top tips for dealing with a bad grade or failing a class? :-)

oh omniscient algorithm

Hey rising college seniors (or anyone needing to write a thesis-length work)! Last year, I tackled not one but TWO theses, one of which was honors-length and over 100 pages long. One was for Art History and the other for International Studies, so if you come from a discipline from outside of the humanities, it might look a little different for you. Here is my advice for making your thesis a little bit less scary to navigate.

1) Focus on a topic before developing an argument.

I don’t know about y’all, but whenever I write a research paper, my argument drastically changes from the conception of the paper to its final draft. It’s not necessary to have your argument nailed down right away. My Art History thesis loosely started at “20th century art and politics” in September, but by November it had gone through 2 or 3 different iterations before becoming “everyone forgets that Jackson Pollock was a communist”. Often choosing your argument before doing your research boxes you into a place from which it is difficult to grow.

2) Try to avoid falling into a research hole.

I’m a jSTOR hoe. I love clicking through library search results and scholarly articles and collecting anything that seems relevant to my topic. This always leads me into hours of sifting through articles that are ultimately unhelpful and a waste of time and brain energy. Start with four or five sources. Read, analyze, regroup. Take notes, and when you are done with those sources, move on to more relevant information. Don’t forget to look up the citations of your most relevant sources. This is a treasure trove!

3) If you need to collect data, do it early.

Nothing is worse than being unable to move forward with your research analysis because you still have to collect more data. If you need to conduct interviews or produce survey data, make sure that you prioritize the research required to generate these things and get them approved and out early. I couldn’t analyze my results until a month before my IS thesis was due, and it made my last month of college rather hellish.

4) Have an accountability partner.

Try to find any friends or classmates who are also thesis-ing and band together. Host library write-ins or start a group chat if you prefer to work alone. You can also turn your thesis into a social activity! My friends and I would spend our Friday nights drinking and talking through our arguments and exchanging feedback in a casual social setting. That might not be what it looks like for you, but regardless of what you do, it’s great to have someone who will hold you accountable and work alongside you.

5) Format your citations and works cited right away.

While it is super tempting to footnote sentences with links to articles while writing, leaving all of your citations for the very end makes life harder. Format your citations frequently to give yourself a mental “break” and keep them in a separate word doc.

6) I don’t know if this actually needs to be said, but keep all of your work backed up.

For the love of all things that are good do not leave your work saved exclusively do a desktop. I like to use Google Drive to manage all things (I even upload journal articles so that I can organize them in folders and access them anywhere from any device), especially because it autosaves constantly. Use whichever platform works best for you, but please, please, please back up your work to some sort of cloud.

Hopefully some of these are a helpful place to get started. Good luck!

“Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

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