Doing Homework

[dennis08]

I have trouble doing homework because my brain is a little slow so it takes me hours to do something that will take a person thirty minutes.

This is one of the reasons why I shy away from homework because I hate coming home and doing it until it’s almost the next day.

It feels like a waste of life but I know it isn’t. Is there any way I could overcome this?

[boxofrain]

Focus. Maybe home isn't the best environment to be doing your school work. Try the school library, starbucks, the park...anything where you're free of distractions. Make it part of your daily routine. Once it becomes a habit, you will feel something missing when you blow it off.

I'm a bit concerned that you're saying your brain "is a little slow." You're already making up excuses. You write quite well so I know, off the bat, that your not giving yourself enough credit.

Hang in there.

[Lauxa]

Hey Dennis,

I'm also having a huge problem with procrastination right now. I have a project that I just really don't want to do and that is taking forever (have been working on it for over a year already). I keep thinking I am close to being done, and more stuff keeps popping up and it keeps getting harder and harder to find the motivation to work on it.

Steve wrote a good article on procrastination a while back: http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles...astination.htm

Also I keep finding the theme in spiritual traditions that acceptance is the first stage of change. I am artistic, so I drew a picture that represents the procrastinator part of me, and I am trying to send that part of myself love and acceptance. I think EFT is also a similar concept.

Is it working? Well, here I am on these forums...

But also... how do you know homework isn't a waste of life? Here you are spending the years when you will have the most energy of your whole life and you are directing it towards doing some pointless assignment that has no real value to anyone. Maybe you are "learning something", but if it is something you are not interested in learning and practicing on a regular basis, you will probably not retain the knowledge. Maybe you are getting a degree, but whether you need a degree or not depends on what you want to do with your life. When I look back at all the years I spent in public schools just getting by until I could pursue what I really wanted... someday... it seems pretty wasteful to me.

Good luck in finding your motivation!

[The David]

If you find that an aversion to school/work is your problem (which manifests in procrastination), then I recommend the book 'The Now Habit'. It is on Steve's reading list and the author's name is Neil Fiore, I believe. He talks about the 'unschedule', a system where you work in 30 minute blocks, and using reverse psychology to make yourself feel 'work deprived'. I think Steve talks about that as well.

I know I have had the same problem you're talking about, and the underlying causes were so far beneath the surface that I have only recently begun exhuming them, and am not even close to finishing.

[JeffS]

Ditto the rec on The Now Habit. Great, great book.

Frankly, it doesn't matter how long it takes other people. There are always people who can do anything you value much faster than you can. If it takes hours, it takes hours. If you value it (or related: you value the results of having done it, like a good grade), you'll do it.

[Calculusaurus]

I don't think the problem is with procrastination...

I often experience what the OP mentioned. I did a homework assignment the other day and it took me like 8 hours when it should've taken me about 2. Sometimes it just takes a while for my brain to start its gears...

It feels like turning on a car engine when it's freezing cold outside. It takes a while for my brain to warm up.

Eventually, later in the semester I usually find myself in more of a flow state.

So my advice is to set aside your worries about how long it will take you. Go ahead, relax, and do your homework at a comfortable pace, even if it takes a long time. It feels like you're using up way to much time, but...

Eventually, after staying busy like this for a while (a few weeks, perhaps), your brain should be warmed up and you'll know how to tackle things more efficiently.

That's been my experience, at least.

[The David]

Are you depressed, currently bothered about something, or easily discouraged? Any one of these things will slow you down, and you may not realize them immediately. If you aren't a procrastinator, or any of the other things I've mentioned, then maybe you're just you. If you're in school, you might be able to get accomodations or treatment for ADHD, if you choose to go that route. Otherwise, just try to do as well as you can and accept that not everyone goes at the same pace.

[Joel Chue]

Keep doing. It's like building muscles. The more you
do, the better you get at it.

[Phil Parkinson]

Originally Posted by dennis08

I have trouble doing homework because my brain is a little slow so it takes me hours to do something that will take a person thirty minutes.

This is one of the reasons why I shy away from homework because I hate coming home and doing it until it’s almost the next day.

It feels like a waste of life but I know it isn’t. Is there any way I could overcome this?

I think you hit the nail on the head in that every time you sit down to do your homework, you will get a little bit better about it. THe brain is a muscle and you are giving it a work out... Let's say your brain is not in such good shape as the person sat next to you... that just means you need to work out a little bit more...

You may not recognise your improvements on a day to day basis, but with consistent effort, I bet you will over a longer period of time.

I like to box... I like going to the gym and hitting the bag... Every punch feels like the punch before... But.... if i look back to how my punches were in July, I have improved in speed, technique, power...

I wonder if the same could be said with your ability to do your homework?

Phil x

[CoolStuff]

Yeah I'm in high school too. it sucks. pointless work as always. I'm actually supposed to be writing an essay about some short story right now. I just wrote more in this post than I did for the essay. (Only did the introduction, which took me about an hour. LOL)

I just wrote an application for this audio internship in 3 hours, and I did 2 drafts (I never do drafts for english class LOL). I can write so much, it's just that english class is stupid, and it's not teaching me how to write better. I'm still very inarticulate, I can't get my point across, and I'm terrible at organizing my writing.

But yeah, overall I'm a procrastinator (dad is even worse than I am, I like to blame it on him LOL). Getting in the right environment does help, and just doing it.

For homework, I try to do it at school, because I know I'm forced to be in school anyway, might as well make the most out of it.

[ticktockclok]

Get a job/make money and pay someone to do it for you. You'll learn far more with the business, and there's no need to feel guilty because school is such an idiotic and corrupt institution anyway.

[trs4ece]

Ah homework, how I loathe it. It doesn't stop in high school unfortunately. I'm in college and am experiencing almost the exact same symptoms as the OP described. It gets to such a point that I'd rather clean my apartment than do homework many times.

Interest level does seem to play a very prominent roll in work productivity. I know that if I have a programming assignment that I'll usually stick to it even past my normal bed time but on the other hand if I have a math assignment, then I'll actually become physically exhausted and want to go to sleep as early as 4 PM! It's a strange phenomenon for sure.

The best I can figure is that we've got to find a way to make the assignment more interesting to ourselves. Creating reward incentives has never worked for me because I know that I could just go out and get that reward if I wanted to without finishing the work. Have you ever played a RPG? If so, then you probably are very familiar with the dull grinding of skills or experience. That's the latest trick that I'm trying to pull on myself for doing homework. Just considering it "leveling my math skill" or whatever class it's for. In addition I can pretend like I'm a code breaker on a critical mission of national security and I've got to decrypt these messages and hand them in to my CO by the next morning to save thousands of lives.

Although I haven't quite got to the point where those techniques work very well (see, I'm typing on the forums instead of studying *right now*) I think that they could hold some promise. Might be worth a shot before you just write off the class as a "waste of time" and have to deal with a big fat F on your transcript. The actions we do today can have far reaching consequences in the future. It's kind of the "I prevented a war by drinking my green tea" idea. Ex. many universities have strict admission guidelines; when you're a junior/senior you apply to a university; the university looks at your english grade and says "yeah right"; so then you're forced to go straight into the workforce where you work 50 hours a week for low pay for the rest of your life--and all because you decided to not hand in that essay when you were in high school. Yeah, maybe a stretch but still plausible. And on that note, I'm off to study!

[jamestl2]

You guys might also like this post:
Homework is Useless

Originally Posted by ticktockclok

Get a job/make money and pay someone to do it for you. You'll learn far more with the business, and there's no need to feel guilty because school is such an idiotic and corrupt institution anyway.

I don't think you'll learn that much more fro getting a job, you may learn a lot in the beginning, but then the knowledge levels off, like this post from Steve:
10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

[trs4ece]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

You guys might also like this post:
Homework is Useless[/url]

That's a pretty entertaining article for sure but without homework there's no real way for students to learn their material. Homework may be 10% of a grade (20% in my class) but the time spent doing homework actually helps create efficiency at solving problems on exams which is where the bulk of the grade comes from. True, we could make up our own study methods rather than doing assigned homework and get by but why not get an extra 10% by doing whatever recommended set of studying the teacher recommends. And besides, you always have the option of using triage for the crap assignments that are clearly just busy work. I always hated teachers who would dole out assignments in early english classes like, "Write each of your vocabulary words 50 times." Yeah, teachers like that should be smacked. I credit my craptastic handwriting to getting assignments like that since I was forced to just spam out text as fast as possible in order to have any sort of free time. On the other hand, story problems, although I hated them at the time, are probably some of the best homework problems that a teacher could give. Yeah, they're kinda stupid sometimes, "If the shadow from the 20 foot flag pole is 5 feet and your shadow is 2 feet, how tall are you?" hmm... well I could just use the tape measure that I used to measure my shadows and measure my own height instead. But some are downright cool like this CSI style one, "A body was found by a janitor at 2 am. The temperature of the body was found to be 82 Fahrenheit. If the building was kept at 72 Fahrenheit and average body temperature is 98.6 Farenheit, then when was the person killed?" Yeah, I actually had a problem like that in math class and was morbidly thrilled

[heather]

The best way to overcome is just keep on doing it.....

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[liverpool footballer]

Hey i have a suggestion for your homework problem.

Although my english is considered okay, i often find this "writer's block" problem where i can't really express myself the way i want to. Maybe the same applies to you. I didn't know what to do, until i read one of the lessons in this mini course by stuart (something). Here's what he taught

Write down your target, then edit and modify it until you feel it sounds right. when it sounds right, it means there is no unconscious conflict within you and it will work with you instead of against you.

So in this case, your possible target statement would be "i intend to do my homework to the best of my ability in an easy, relaxed manner where the words and ideas flow out through my pen." Edit the statement until you feel it sounds "right", then go on about doing your work.

It worked great for overcoming my writer's block