By Matt Oliver [guest writer]
I’m sure many of you will have experienced procrastination in its many forms - its a fact of life for many of us. However there are things you can do to overcome it and to help you with your applications.
Procrastination is that feeling of being a bit stuck and unable to move forward with whatever you are doing. Procrastination can come about for a few reasons but the main one is because of fear. You may fear failure or you may fear what people think. Much of this can be happening on a more subconscious level too so its not always easy to identify it obviously as fear. Now without wanting to get too psychological and self-helpy on you, there are some ways to break through that fear and therefore the procrastination.
The first step is to sit for a moment and examine what you are thinking and analyse why you may think that you are fearful of failure or what others think. Weirdly you may even be afraid of success and this can lead to procrastination too. Once you identify these thoughts then just decide to let them go - recognise that they are limiting thoughts and let go of them.
The next thing to do is to make sure you are not feeling sorry for yourself. This may sound a bit harsh but often we can stop ourselves moving forwards because we are feeling sorry for ourselves. Just choose to stop this now and move on more positively. Another major reason for procrastination is because we feel the task at hand is too big. Researching those firms, making all those applications and still trying to study and work at the same time all seems like too big a mountain to climb - but that's simply not true.
At the start of your degree if you looked at all the work that needed to be done over the 3 or 4 years then you would have felt overwhelmed for sure. But when your university breaks it down into smaller chunks spaced evenly across the weeks it suddenly becomes much more achievable.
A famous quote which is good to remember is “You can eat a whole elephant if you take it one bite at a time”. The same goes for your applications and dealing with your procrastination.
This article is an extract from the eBook "21 Secrets to Successful Applications" written by Matt Oliver of Trainee Solicitor Surgery. Get a free copy of the full eBook here: FREE EBOOK
