Worries of Procrastination

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plebismaximus26

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Hello, I will be a plebe this coming year in the class of 2026. I am currently finishing up my senior year at high school. I am particularly worried about my time management skills. I am experiencing senioritis pretty bad right now. Historically, I have been a "no time is more efficient than the last minute" kind of guy. With this I have still been able to consistently get the job done and get good grades. I wondering from the people who have been through plebe summer and the entirety of the plebe year, to what extent is the academy able to drive procrastination and other inefficient habits out of you? I would love to be a more efficient person, I just don't think I've had the necessary conditions provided for me to drive this habit out. From what I understand, USNA is highly demanding and not a place for procrastination by any means. I know the transition will be hard but I am confident in my ability to adapt and overcome. I am just wondering how hard will this be, and will I survive? Thank you for any input you have.
 
plebismaximus26 said:
Hello, I will be a plebe this coming year in the class of 2026. I am currently finishing up my senior year at high school. I am particularly worried about my time management skills. I am experiencing senioritis pretty bad right now. Historically, I have been a "no time is more efficient than the last minute" kind of guy. With this I have still been able to consistently get the job done and get good grades. I wondering from the people who have been through plebe summer and the entirety of the plebe year, to what extent is the academy able to drive procrastination and other inefficient habits out of you? I would love to be a more efficient person, I just don't think I've had the necessary conditions provided for me to drive this habit out. From what I understand, USNA is highly demanding and not a place for procrastination by any means. I know the transition will be hard but I am confident in my ability to adapt and overcome. I am just wondering how hard will this be, and will I survive? Thank you for any input you have.
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You have the one tool that is necessary to avoid procrastination, set new habits - your brain, the same body part that got you into the procrastination rut. You have to want to not procrastinate. It’s not the responsibility or role of external factors to cure you.

There is a lot of practical help out there. You start small - all elephants are eaten one bit at a time - and figure out the mental traps you willingly fall into. Conquer small things, and they add up.

Here’s a sample.

MindTools | Home

Essential skills for an excellent career
www.mindtools.com www.mindtools.com

You say, “I am experiencing senioritis pretty bad right now.” Not quite accurate. It’s not something that just arrived in your life and took over your mind, as if you had no free will. You have chosen to feel and act this way. In the next minute, you could choose to exercise your autonomy and free will and self-mastery over feelings and actions. If you cannot, you may want to take a rapid-zombie test. 😉

Over the years I was on staff at USNA and the years we have been sponsoring midshipmen, I have observed there are many who had essentially coasted through high school academics and were not particularly challenged, blessed with good brains and strong memories. At USNA, you will realize many people’s academic prowess equals or exceeds yours. Those first Cs and Ds will be a bucket of cold Severn River water to the face; someone gets them. There will be massive competing priorities for your available time. You will learn to optimize. You will either figure out how to swim with the big fish or not - and face academic probation or worse. Academic probation can impact your limited fun time off-Yard and other enjoyable aspects of life. Bad grades affect your Order of Merit (OOM) and class standing, which will, down the road, impact competitiveness for your desired service assignment.

You are procrastinating right now, looking to USNA daily routine to magically cure you of habitual behavior. Only you can make the changes necessary, and you can start in this instant using that powerfully organ sitting atop your spine. Pick a small procrastination habit, and conquer it. Rinse and repeat.
 
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Necessity is the mother of invention. If “no time is more efficient than the last minute”, then that is when you will change what you need to change- if anything- out of necessity. I too was/am a great procrastinator and became an Naval Aviator but I am also a planner and while I do some things in appear last minute- I also had a plan working backwards from there to complete the mini tasks that allow me to put the cherry on top at that last minute. I did have to adjust though, adjust because I was working with others who needed me to complete tasks on a timeline outside my head. Also, lack of preparation is really not tolerated- 6 p’s. Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. Planning is key.
 
Capt MJ said:
Over the years I was on staff at USNA and the years we have been sponsoring midshipmen, I have observed there are many who had essentially coasted through high school academics and were not particularly challenged, blessed with good brains and strong memories. At USNA, you will realize many people’s academic prowess equals or exceeds yours. Those first Cs and Ds will be a bucket of cold Severn River water to the face; someone gets them.
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Hey! Are you SURE that you weren't around USNA when I was a mid and were my plebe sponsor?
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The first steps after terrible first 4 week grades was a massive expansion of effort on my part with TONS of study time. Over a couple of years, the hours spent studying decreased and the grades increased.
 
OldRetSWO said:
Hey! Are you SURE that you weren't around USNA when I was a mid and were my plebe sponsor?
.
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The first steps after terrible first 4 week grades was a massive expansion of effort on my part with TONS of study time. Over a couple of years, the hours spent studying decreased and the grades increased.
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Hey, shipmate, my year group is just one year earlier than yours. We are about equalily located in the tottering space around the grave. That’s why we know so many people in common, fellow totterers all.

I feel your pain, though. I had to re-calibrate mental deadlines and pace of work to ensure early delivery per Navy culture.
 
Capt MJ said:
You have the one tool that is necessary to avoid procrastination, set new habits - your brain, the same body part that got you into the procrastination rut. You have to want to not procrastinate. It’s not the responsibility or role of external factors to cure you.

There is a lot of practical help out there. You start small - all elephants are eaten one bit at a time - and figure out the mental traps you willingly fall into. Conquer small things, and they add up.

Here’s a sample.

MindTools | Home

Essential skills for an excellent career
www.mindtools.com www.mindtools.com

You say, “I am experiencing senioritis pretty bad right now.” Not quite accurate. It’s not something that just arrived in your life and took over your mind, as if you had no free will. You have chosen to feel and act this way. In the next minute, you could choose to exercise your autonomy and free will and self-mastery over feelings and actions. If you cannot, you may want to take a rapid-zombie test. 😉

Over the years I was on staff at USNA and the years we have been sponsoring midshipmen, I have observed there are many who had essentially coasted through high school academics and were not particularly challenged, blessed with good brains and strong memories. At USNA, you will realize many people’s academic prowess equals or exceeds yours. Those first Cs and Ds will be a bucket of cold Severn River water to the face; someone gets them. There will be massive competing priorities for your available time. You will learn to optimize. You will either figure out how to swim with the big fish or not - and face academic probation or worse. Academic probation can impact your limited fun time off-Yard and other enjoyable aspects of life. Bad grades affect your Order of Merit (OOM) and class standing, which will, down the road, impact competitiveness for your desired service assignment.

You are procrastinating right now, looking to USNA daily routine to magically cure you of habitual behavior. Only you can make the changes necessary, and you can start in this instant using that powerfully organ sitting atop your spine. Pick a small procrastination habit, and conquer it. Rinse and repeat.
Click to expand...
The phenomenon of coasting hs students turning into below average cadets/midshipman is real! In my case, it was my first F ever on a Mech Engr GR first semester. Wake-up call received and I adjusted quickly! I am thankful that there were no lasting effects in my case but some of my classmates struggled. OP, heed Capt MJs sage advice.
 
Suggest you reframe the issue to make it bigger yet more solvable: You don’t have a procrastination problem, you have a time-management problem. Time management is vital at SAs, and it’s on YOU to do it.

As a teacher at our flagship state university, I’ve found that what separates successful students from unsuccessful ones is not brains and smarts, but effort and time management. The latter two go together. How you choose to spend your time is 100% on you. To succeed at an SA, you’ll need to proactively prioritize your hours, days and weeks. The key word being YOU.
 
Capt MJ said:
Those first Cs and Ds will be a bucket of cold Severn River water to the face; someone gets them. There will be massive competing priorities for your available time. You will learn to optimize. You will either figure out how to swim with the big fish or not - and face academic probation or worse.
Click to expand...
^ This hits it right on the head -- except I would venture to say that "almost everybody" gets them... I recall one of my Candidates, straight A's and 800/800 SAT's, and was shocked into reality by a C in Chemistry at midterm Plebe year. I was lucky, my wake up came at NAPS. I got my butt kicked, but learned how to prioritize and use time more effectively.

One additional critical skill...almost the opposite of procrastination, is learning how much effort to put into a particular task. This is a function of prioritization, but sometimes there are so many things that have to be done that you can't do everything perfectly, and you have to cut corners or skimp on the lower priority tasks, and take your lumps, For example, while there is a lot of satisfaction in a perfect room inspection ..the time difference between passing and perfection could be significant.
 
No need to worry about procrastination or time management in Plebe Summer. You will be told where you need to be, what to wear, at what time. And to be honest, you will fail at it a lot at the beginning.

Plebe Year is the most regimented year. It is designed that way to sort of force you to have time management skills. There is one truth for all Mids; you never have time to do everything on your plate. This means you generally get what has to be done, done. After Plebe Year you have more freedom in your time. There are plenty of Mids who game half the day, stay up all night and then cram work in and then Red Bull all day and are miserable trying to stay awake.
 
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Concur with @MidCakePa

Time management wise, what I see in high schoolers and some others is that they don’t know how to set priorities. They don’t do first things, first. This is because their priorities are aligned horizontally - all the priorities are given the same weight and time. This is hardly efficient. You have to arrange your priorities vertically. Something is more important than the other. This you can decide. You acknowledged USNA is going to be demanding. Guess what? In the fleet, things are going to be just as demanding. Your enlisted men and women will be counting you. Your superiors will expect a lot from you. Miss a deadline or two that affects people and mission, it’ll get ugly really quick. You might “read about it” later in your fitness report. Learn to set priorities.
 
Old Navy BGO said:
^ This hits it right on the head -- except I would venture to say that "almost everybody" gets them... I recall one of my Candidates, straight A's and 800/800 SAT's, and was shocked into reality by a C in Chemistry at midterm Plebe year.
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So, so true. DD was a very good time manager in high school, with academic results to prove it. But she called me during plebe year, very upset that the midterm she’d just taken (in a subject she’d always aced) would likely be an F. I gave her the usual “dad pep talk”: “Oh, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. You’ll be fine.” She called back the next day feeing better, saying “I didn’t get an F! I got a D by one point!”

Postscript: DD is no longer a very good time manager, but a great time manager. And as @Old Navy BGO says, every mid/cadet gets that slap in the face.
 
My '24 is the KING of procrastination. He gets it academic work done--sometimes last minute. I would say where it's hurt the most is when those emails come out about a cool MO or activity and he doesn't respond right away and misses out. He's learning though. Prioritize and find a way to organize. You'll figure it out.
 
As a fellow procrastinator, (so is my DD), I think you have an edge at USNA.

You've managed to earn an appointment to the USNA probably as a "procrastinator". Would you/could you do better if you weren't a procrastinator? Maybe, but the implication is that you have a little bit of extra "gas in the tank" that you haven't tapped into yet, because you procrastinate (that's a good thing).

More likely, your are a "Competitive Procrastinator". There is a fair body of research that suggests really successful people, ( as a USNA Plebe-to- be you qualify for your age group) are often "Competitive Procrastinators" def: Procrastinators driven to succeed who have learned to take advantage of a brain that is 100% focused by the panic of a deadline. This really something you have going for you particularly in the context of attending the USNA.

Please take a few minutes away from the class work you should be doing ;) and have a look at one of my favorite TED talks. Its kinda funny and very insightful re procrastination. Its worth your time---I'll wait, seriously stop now and watch this before reading more of this post







As near as I can tell, EVERY MID GETS TO MEET THE PANIC MONSTER MULTIPLE TIMES WHILE AT THE USNA.

Over the course of her time at the USNA DD called --sheesh! she called a lot of times, while she was pulling an all-nighter. Her Panic monster was present in those times but she knew how to use it, not be genuinely panicked by it.

During her plebe and 3C yrs she called a couple of time exhausted around 9pm Pacific time to ask me to give her a wake-up call when I hit the rack at 12 (3AM her time). I'd call and make sure she was truly awake. DD would then resume work through to completion of a paper or exam prep. But like you, my DD was well acquainted with The Panic Monster, its appearance didn't phase her and she was confident in the work product/studying that she did with the monster present. DD procrastinated her way through the USNA and did pretty well.

Many of your classmates will have to deal with their more ordered approach to getting work done being blown-up by the volume of tasking coming at them. You will have to adjust to more frequent appearances of the "Panic Monster" but not the monster itself -------------------------he's an old friend you know how to use him.

More Good News For You:

Here's what your teen-aged "Instant Gratification Monkey" will look like at the end of Plebe Summer.
iu.jpeg

Life in an adult meritocracy, working/studying in friendly competition with your classmates for seats in airplanes, spots at nuc-school, medical, Intel, or just making grades to stay in,.... that won't end until service selection during your 1c year. Scholastic challenges, leadership challenges and messaging about duty /responsibility, to yourself and your shipmates will be pretty much constant.

Dead lines will be frequent and regular (the Panic Monster always lurking close by). Your Instant Gratification Monkey just wants to have fun, he/she isn't intentionally self destructive. Expect it to keep a low profile as new tasks frequently emerge from the Fire Hose; (your not stupid, you will adjust).

I like your odds, and if I were you I wouldn't be too worried.

I am sure some others here are thinking I have just damned you to failure by minimizing your problem; so one procrastinator to another, here are a couple of suggestions to manage your procrastination.

1) In my life, my 100% focused procrastinator mind generally does good work. The problem has been that a 100% focus on an immediate task has sometimes caused me to overlook, forget, miss other tasks and obligations. Both DD and I keep a calendar with us most of the time. We are both old fashioned in that we write things down in a calendar notebook. keeps us from missing stuff when we are holding the Panic Monster at bay. Highly-Highly recommended.

2) There are tons of great opportunities for your free time at USNA. If you are really worried about making grades, make study groups with regular meeting schedules a priority. Ones where you sit at the mid to top of the group in terms of proficiency. The Monkey might blow off study for you but mine will support attendance as a duty to others rather than work I need to do for myself. You will learn by teaching and it also will serve as a quasi study hall.

3) Find a friend, family member on the west coast who you can call upon for a wake-up call at 3-4-5 AM your time in Maryland. Not saying you should figure on imposing regularly or pull all nighters often, but when you are in that situation a 2-3hr nap that you know you will be woken from to study/work some more can be golden.

4) Frankly, avoid courses that depend on incremental and repudiative learning: Saaaay Arabic or Chinese language studies. Crushed me in college; crushed my DD at USNA

Congratulations on your appointment, and good-on-you for choosing a path less traveled by. Now if you'' excuse me, I have some work to do on a couple of contracts; ...... right after a play a round or two of Battle Supremacy on the net.
 
Thank you all for the great advice. Your responses didn't make me comfortable with my procrastination in the sense that I don't think it is a problem, but rather I am comforted by the fact that I now know it's something I can and will overcome. I am lucky enough have great parents that have put me in the best circumstances to subside my inefficient habits such as private school and very little access to all the video games my friends were playing. They never allowed me to quit a sport without finishing the season and were always on me about getting my homework done in a timely manner. I know now that this responsibility is on me and no one else from here forward. Again thank you for all for easing my nerves a little. These past few months after receiving my appointment has been an uphill battle of settling my nerves. I have been asked during that time things like, "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Every time, I confidently tell them that I've got this.
 
I personally don't like procrastinating, but I know that every mid has a different way they like to study. As long as you get work done before the due date, it doesn't necessarily matter when it gets done. The problem with procrastination as a plebe is that you plan to get the work done at the last minute because that's when you're most pressured to be productive, and then your training staff/chain of command schedules something dumb to stress you out and waste your time (pressure for a purpose for sure, but difficult to balance with school and athletics), like an extra beatdown workout, signature sheets, company tours, or plebe boards.

Your study habits will change a lot as you face these challenges, especially because you face the pressure of being AC UNSAT or having to give up leave to retake a class. However, even despite good time management, sometimes it is necessary to stay up late to study because you just have too much on your plate. For many mids, sleep is the first and most frequent sacrifice which is why caffeine is in high demand. I have found that the more sleep I get, the better I do in school because I don't fall asleep and can pay attention in class so I don't have to restudy material on the back end.

Time management will also depend on what ECAs/sports you do outside of school. Although being a varsity athlete has its rewards, it is even more challenging to have enough time to study outside of school, whereas my friends who do intermurals joke about how their greatest challenge is deciding what Netflix show to watch after school.
 
Having completed many, many BS and Graduate courses, and done lots of business consulting: I have learned and re-learned that doing writing assignments and projects ahead of the "nigh before it's due" and then polishing the work over a couple days (an hour here-20 minutes there), significantly improves the quality of work (and thus the grade). So Midshipman and Cadets try your hardest to do the same. Yes, the pressures and time demands on you are much more that a civilian college...but just finishing a paper one day before it's due will give you the opportunity to put it aside, work on something else, then improve the paper in just one hour the night before. Set your individual self expectations high-and execute accordingly. When you trip-remember you are human!
 
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