I’m going to give you something different than productivity hacks because I’m sure you’ve seen it all. Those are actually helpful to some degree. I use a lot of tricks myself. But…there’s something much more foundational you need to tackle: reframing procrastination as a byproduct of your expectations, prioritization, capacity, and character. Here’s my opinionated take based on my experience:

* You only consider yourself a procrastinator because you have high/different/maybe unrealistic expectations for yourself. It’s not that you’re not productive…you’re doing well in school and doing what you need to do. Maybe other students are even jealous or your ability to pull everything together at the last second whereas they have to grind for weeks/days before to achieve similar results. Consider the benefits of your style. Anyways, you’re asking this question because you want *more*. It’s good to want to improve and yearn for more, but you need to understand you’re asking how to be exceptional and that doesn’t happen without exceptional effort and sacrifices. Are you actually willing to do what it takes to be exceptional? How’re you going to summon the willpower? How’ve you structured your lifestyle to support that? You can’t “just do it” or you would’ve. You’re missing some bigger picture.

* You have a “chaotic” working style. Embrace it. It’s served you well. Fighting this is going to just result in some cognitive dissonance and you getting in your own way. Tools aren’t going to change you. You can take adderall (basically meth lol) to rewire yourself IF you are failing to function, but it’s not worth it imo in the long term / you’re doing fine.

* Once you stop fighting your own nature, you need to stop thinking about time management and start thinking about energy management. What are you putting your energy into? You have a finite amount of it. It’s not that you can’t read more / study more…it’s that those are probably way more draining on you. You won’t be able to do them unless you clear out a whole day, half of which is mentally preparing yourself to finally take the plunge. You don’t do it because your internal prioritization system does not view this as worth it. You want to do things that are hard for you…but you don’t want to actually go through the hardship. That’s normal and self-preserving. Besides…what if it’s a gigantic waste of time? Waiting till the last minute is also really a way to derive certainty and a sense of safety that your work is going towards something that’ll matter.

* Regarding prioritization. You do things when they need to be done. So you aren’t lazy. The fact that you’re doing them last minute means that your internal prioritization formula doesn’t really value being done early. In fact, maybe you perform better with super high pressure and have realized that doing things last minute is how you’re most efficient. It’s that simple. The only way to change is not to introduce structure in the form or tools that tries to subvert how you prioritize things…instead you need to figure out how to get value out of not doing things last minute so you change your own internal prioritization framework. For me, this has been realizing that every great thing that I achieved in my life or work has happened with daily incremental effort. Instead of rushing towards a finish line, I prioritize the grind itself.

* You need to rest. That time you spend browsing for sure is in part due to maybe poor self control or being sucked into a dopamine cycle. I also think it’s likely that you’re not honest with yourself on needing recovery time. Your body and mind will just stop cooperating with you when they’re depleted, and then you blame yourself for not being good enough. Instead focus on sleep, nutrition, etc to boost your energy reserves, and focus on energy management. I actually recommend against explicitly taking “break” days for reasons I don’t feel like explaining, but just be honest with yourself.

Remember…this isn’t a set of excuses to maintain the status quo. This reframing exists to enable you to make changes that actually work vs. chasing the next hack.