Homework is the worst. Whether you’re a grade A student or you struggle to pay attention in class, everyone knows having home assignments is the worst part of academic life.
The last thing you want to be doing on a Friday night is writing an essay. You want to have fun, but you can’t go and find a dance floor till you finish all your homework.
There is a way to do homework fast though! Whatever is getting in the way, all these tips below will give you valuable insights into getting it done!
Here’s how to do homework assignments if…
If you procrastinate
Some people will often struggle with homework assignments because they procrastinate. They find any number of other tasks to complete rather than the one they are supposed to be doing. Your professor has set you a tough assignment, and suddenly you must clean your room!
Procrastination isn’t laziness or not wanting to do anything. It’s wanting to do everything but the tasks at hand. Unfortunately, the result of this is a rise in stress levels and a lot of missed deadlines. The more you cut, the lower your overall grade and suddenly you’re failing. So it would help if you found a way to get yourself focused on the right task.
It can be useful to have a friend or family member who will hold you accountable. Set times when this person will call you up and ask how you’re getting on with your homework tasks. It can be a huge incentive if you know you have to report your progress along the way. In addition, your accountability buddy can be responsible for giving you the push you need if you find yourself procrastinating a lot.
You can also trick yourself into doing the work. For example, write Monday in your diary when your professor sets the homework assignment and says it is due on Wednesday. This way, even if you still leave it to the last minute, that gives you another 48 hours to ensure it is done to a good standard.
Having a reward system can also help you focus. Tell yourself that you can watch a film or eat a slice of chocolate cake once you have finished. This can encourage you to get started quicker.
If you struggle with time management
It can be a real challenge to make the time for homework in your busy schedule. Managing your time is a crucial skill to learn. Having a lot of reading causes stress and anxiety for most students. Poor mental health will hurt your studies, so finding ways to manage your time will help reduce stress.
Start by writing a list of all the tasks you have to complete; essays, reading, and any homework you’ve been set. Now, prioritize this list. Ensure that the most important tasks go at the top of the list and the least important at the bottom. Everything at the top of the list must be done today, and the rest can be done later. This will help you focus on spending your time wisely and not just going to do the fun homework first while leaving the trickier stuff. Also, having a list can help you stay focused as you don’t need to spend time thinking about what to do next. Plus, being able to cross tasks off the list is a great motivator.
Plan
Have a well-organized planner. Put on there your class schedule, any extracurricular activities, and everything you have planned. Then, the remaining gaps can be considered time dedicated exclusively to homework. It will help to visualize your available time and fit your work into manageable chunks. It can be useful to consider how much time each task will take so you can fit them into appropriately sized gaps in your planner. Don’t set yourself 20 minutes to do a 60-minute task. It’ll just demotivate you if you have to rush and don’t manage your time effectively.
Set yourself alarms and reminders. If you are very busy, it can be a good idea to have an alert to tell you when to start a piece of work so you don’t veer from your planned schedule.
Have healthy snacks. Ensure you have lots of nuts and fruit at hand for when you start your homework and make sure you drink water. The protein, nutrients, and fluids will help you focus solely on your homework problems as you won’t be distracted by hunger pangs. Don’t eat snacks high in sugar as you’ll soon crash and feel physically tired.
If you struggle with motivation
Many students struggle to find motivation. They might not be very interested in the subject or find the homework problems too easy or too hard. Either way, it isn’t fun, so they cannot find the willpower to get going.
A good tip is to give yourself small and regular rewards. For example, for every 15 minutes spent on homework, give yourself 5 minutes to look at Instagram. Each time you reward yourself you release dopamine, which provides you with a satisfying feeling. This will reinforce the behavior of doing homework and will help encourage you to do homework fast with focused thinking.
You could create or join a homework group. Having other people around you can be helpful if you can all encourage one another to work. You can also discuss the work to provide some homework help for one another. A better understanding of the task will help you complete the homework faster and quickly solve homework problems.
Your environment has a huge impact on your focus. Doing homework in bed or anywhere in your bedroom can make it more challenging. Your brain knows that your room is where you sleep, so it doesn’t work getting comfy and trying to get focused. Taking short breaks around your things inevitably leads to distractions. Try to go somewhere where it is quiet and with few distractions. Also, ensure you are in a well-lit environment. Working in a library, for example, is much more conducive to focus than at home.
If you become easily distracted
These days everything is so instant. Technology has made us much more impatient and way less able to concentrate on one thing for a prolonged period. Our attention spans are shortening, so we quickly lose focus and struggle to get back to the right mindset afterward. But there are ways to manage this by finding a distraction-free environment.
Before you start, figure out what equipment you will need for your assignments. Then, collect it all together and have it ready in your workspace. If you have to get up to find things you need, you will get distracted by other things around you at the same time.
Have a set workspace you go to every day. It can help with focus if you have a specific workplace. Your brain instinctively will go into work mode once you go there so you can get cracking with your homework asap. Make sure this is a quiet place and there are no screens.
It might help reduce distraction if you have a playlist to help you focus. For example, classical music can be great for studying. It has no lyrics, so you aren’t distracted by that, and the music can often be soothing, helping to reduce stress.
The best idea is to turn off your phone. It won’t kill you, I promise. You will get your homework done faster if you don’t get distracted by messages and social media every 2 minutes. All the time spent on your phone instead of focusing on just homework will make the whole process feel a lot longer than it needs to. It might help to tell your friends and family when you have planned homework time so they know not to get in touch during these times.
Pomodoro Technique
A helpful way to help you focus harder is using the Pomodoro technique. Set a timer for 25 minutes and solidly work straight through this time. Then take a 5-minute break for whatever you like, again, setting a timer. Once you complete four cycles of working with a short break, you can reward yourself with a more extended break. It can help prevent distraction by having a rigorous schedule to work to. The boundaries and rewards involved help encourage you to pay attention during work time. It can be helpful when using this technique to see how long it takes you to finish homework. You’ll probably find you get it done a lot faster than you did before. This can be another great motivator when you realize you are creating more free time for yourself!
Make your homework tasks feel easier
Paying attention in class is probably the best way to make homework feel like less of a challenge. As the teacher talks, ensure you make good notes. Often they set a homework assignment that is going to reinforce what you learned in the lesson and reiterate all the example problems you encountered in the class. So, having complete notes from the class will be a big help. Everyone has a different way of making notes, so make your note-taking technique work.
If you have a bunch of assignments or many questions to answer, start by reading through them all and finding the most challenging. Try and tackle the trickiest work first. If you finish it, it’s out of the way, or if you struggle, you can go on to the next task and come back later. This will give your brain a chance to think about it in the background. You might find that it feels easier to answer when you go back to it.
Your brain functions by working in either focused mode or diffused mode. When you initially look at a question your brain becomes directly focused on it. You try to work through it logically as you process the information. When you go on to another task, your brain continues to think about the previous question in the background. When your brain enters a more relaxed state, it is called diffused thinking. It uses preliminary thinking from a focused mode to view the same thing from a new perspective. Both ways of thinking are helpful, so allowing yourself to use both modes will help you finish homework faster.
Good luck
Hopefully, some of these tips will help you to get your homework done more quickly and easily! Now, you will need less homework help from your professors or online tutors. And you can finally get those eight hours of sleep you’ve been hoping for in between all your classes, athletic training, and seeing friends!