Love, Lucy is the New School Free Press’ weekly advice column, where writers anonymously share thoughtfully researched solutions to your questions about life. Send submissions through Love, Lucy’s official Google Form, and you might hear back from Lucy herself.

Dear Lucy, 

How does one manage their time better? I feel like when I have no urgent assignment due tomorrow, I let my projects loom over me so I can’t ever relax because I always have stuff to work on.

From,

Procrastinator

Dear Procrastinator,

Procrastination is the ultimate working issue. It’s the one we all face at some point or another, and it’s something I’ve been struggling with myself lately. How do we work when there isn’t a time crunch and no one is looming over our shoulder?

Much of this has to do with capitalism. Capitalism teaches us that there is no point in doing something that isn’t going to gratify us — like, now. But without a goal in mind or an end in sight, we are often unable to keep up with the tireless work capitalism obligates if we intend to “succeed.” 

Capitalism tells us we are already late to success, which is often defined as the economic and social security you (might) achieve by maintaining a positive reputation and working until you die. While I know it’s not what you’re looking for, I urge you to consider where your feelings of inadequacy are coming from before jumping into trying to create healthier working styles to avoid this cycle of self-antagonizing. 

Whether you like it or not, we live in a society with expectations, so let’s talk about coping effectively and surviving within them. You need to create a good foundation before trying to overhaul your productivity. First, you need to create some short and long term goals; find some motivation to keep you going. Now, you may be saying “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” and to that I say: hush. You don’t need to be sure of your goals or even be certain they’ll bring you joy to have them. Goals are just something to work toward. 

If you notice yourself not feeling motivated by your goals, it’s time to reconsider them. Goals should be somewhat exciting; they can be practical like a good paying job or lofty like getting famous. Regardless, there will be concrete steps you can take to get there. Cultivate the interests and talents that you have and explore what avenues you can take with them to achieve your goals. These steps shouldn’t be super super specific, just a sort of general outline.

Make sure to write these down or maybe even make a vision board and put them somewhere you will see regularly. You want to be reminded of these short and long-term goals even when you don’t feel great overall. I personally have had a vision board up in my bedroom since early high school and I feel like… it worked? Call me crazy. 

Now it’s time to talk routines. Routines are good because they allow your brain to take a break from decision making. This break allows your brain to free up some space and according to research from 2018 done by The Tavistock Institute, can even foster creativity.

Building work time into your daily and weekly schedule is vital to creating healthy working habits. You must build your work around your time and not time around your work. Say that five times fast. Create a weekly schedule, roughly mapping out time for classes, work, social calls, self-care, and additional responsibilities. This might take a little while, and you may need to try several different iterations, but it’s necessary anyhow. Make sure to include things in your routines that you can look forward to, like eating out, going to your favorite places, and practicing hobbies — this will further motivate you to try this wholeheartedly.

Without self discipline, all the routines in the world can’t help you. One of the best ways to start implementing self disciplinary techniques is to begin writing a daily to-do list. I like to do it the night before when I remember. This allows me to have a seamless start to my day. 

According to an article published in 2016 in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, which compiled several different studies about the most effective ways to increase productivity, creating a written to-do list and checking off the action items as you complete them can improve your productivity significantly. 

For a lot of people, the period between realizing/deciding you need to do work and actually doing the work is the most difficult. So we need to start with some practical motivation to keep you at it. Find something you enjoy doing and can do while completing tasks, maybe drinking a delicious beverage or listening to a favorite album, and try to engage with this thing every time you do work. Soon, you’ll find yourself “Pavloved” into knocking things off your list.

As you toil away, you should minimize distractions by putting your devices on their “Do Not Disturb” setting and going somewhere you can be alone. According to Larry Rosen, a researcher and teacher, one of the biggest things impeding our productivity is our constant connection to endless media and discourse. Rosen says that while checking and replying to messages can feel productive it actually forces us to “task-switch” making us less focused on the task at hand. He recommends we include designated and timed technology breaks throughout the day to avoid the imposition on our productivity. 

During breaks from work you should try to get some movement in. This can be in the form of light stretching, a walk around the block, or a sprint up a few flights of stairs. If you have the ability, you may even want to look into standing desks, as they are a sure fire way to be up and moving around during the work day and boost productivity. 

However, I am here to tell you that creating good working habits isn’t all you need for optimal productivity. You also need to create pockets of time for effective rest. According to a piece published in 2017 by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, rest is critical to creating space and energy for good work. 

For me, resting is the hardest part. I often get home and find myself perched on the edge of my bed an hour later, sort of hanging in limbo between work and rest. In the last few years I’ve learned two things about resting effectively.

First, and I know it feels silly to hear, but rest needs to be planned. You should have built-in time every day to do things that allow you to take a break. I recently began taking naps, which is something that the workaholic in me has always resisted. But now my heart quite literally flutters when I think about napping. Beyond the physical joy of taking a nap is the research that proves regular afternoon naps can actually change the function of your brain, improving your performance and boosting creativity, according to a study done by Sara Mednick. 

The second thing I’ve learned about rest is that when you feel like you need it, you should take it. You may be thinking, “Lucy, what? How can I both plan every moment of my day and be sporadically resting?” My reply? Do what the vibe calls for. Your body is communicating with you and unless there is some pressing reason you can’t, you should listen! 

To sum it all up dear Procrastinator, it’s time to crack open the notebook and get planning. Once you start doing it, it’ll be difficult to believe there was a time when you got by any other way. 

Love, 

Lucy

If you are experiencing a sudden and intense lack of motivation or capacity, you should also consider speaking to a mental health professional as it might be a symptom of a larger issue.