Jeez, first we covered “Parkinson’s Law,” now we’re turning our focus to another potential hindrance to our productivity – “Student Syndrome”. So many unproductive tendencies, so many blog posts!

The good news is, with the understanding of these human tendencies comes a degree of freedom from them. When you come to see the effects of this “syndrome” on your life – you’ll probably want to understand this one well.

• Student Syndrome - 

“We tend to only apply ourselves when we believe we have to.”

This tendency is closely related to “procrastination”, but not synonymous with it. Procrastination deals with a series of habits and ways of avoidance, “Student Syndrome” is just one.

How can we deal with this tendency and keep it from holding us back in important areas of our lives? It may not matter that we did our middle school geography project the night before, but continuing that habit forward into our careers and relationships isn’t likely to be the most direct route to tapping our human potential.

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Before understanding methods of dealing with “SS” (notice the abbreviation, I’m keeping you on your toes here), it will serve us to understand its origins:

      Reserving Energy- This may be argued to be part of our innate programming. We’d rather expend less energy if at all possible. As we know, this will often come back to bite us. It is much easier to come up with a happy little mental picture of us accomplishing the task in the future than it is to get it done now.

      Pain and Pleasure- Arguably the basis of any decision, this facet of “SS”’s function is important to understand. Right now we do not accomplish a certain task because we associate more pleasure to NOT doing it, than to doing it. Alternatively, might we associate more pain to doing it, than to NOT doing it. It boils down to the fact that we do what we believe will be pleasurable – and we often neglect a long-term view.

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Dealing with “SS” – like genuinely dealing with any challenge in our own conditioning – involves grabbing life by the horns.

I do NOT aim to regurgitate traditional “procrastination buster” information here, though I have nothing against it. Ideas such as: chucking large tasks into manageable smaller ones, or writing definite to-do lists – are not useless pieces of information (though I believe some of the common knowledge in this regard needs to be refined), but you’ve heard it before.

Here are some things that I find particularly useful for overcoming our habit of only applying ourselves when we feel as though we must. Essentially, these are ideas to keep things from “blowing up on us” – which in this case means having to pull off the last minute hustle. What I keep in mind, enjoy:

      Unexciting Tasks First- I like this rule, I like it a lot. Here’s how it goes. If you have 10 tasks you want to accomplish in a given day, chase down the one’s you aren’t as excited about first.

      If you plan to work on some writing, visit a friend, do some research in an area of interest, and do the dishes – you’re likely to go to bed with a pile of dirty dishes in the sink if you don’t make a point to do them first. You will find reasons to drag out other tasks forever.

      Instead, understand that the dishes are a necessary task, and use the other exciting tasks as leverage to do the less exciting tasks swiftly and effectively. Don’t wait until the plates are growing mushrooms the size of a cocktail umbrella.

      Exemplify Excellence : Its almost ironic how effective we can be in the last minutes of accomplishing something. The thing is, it was not the external world that brought out our efficacy, it was our perception of what needed to be done.

      Make a habit of diving into your tasks at your best at all times. Take the time to look at yourself while working on any task – a homework assignment, house cleaning, studying, et cetera – and compare your efficacy to when you are at your absolute best.

      When you forgot about the test until the night before, you aren’t half studying, half surfing youtube. You’re (bleep)ing studying. Hopefully you’re taking notes, reviewing important chapters, and diving into the information. What if you studied like this all the time? That would be what I call ‘exemplifying excellence’.

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Implement these ideas the next time you feel like you’re putting something off or vaguely puttering with it when you could be getting things done big time.

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