Why You Always Study Last Minute & What To Do About It

Do You Always Find Yourself Studying Last Minute… Maybe Pulling All Nighters Just Before A Super Important Exam?

Don’t worry it happens to all of us. But the real question is why and what do we do about it? We already know it’s not a great thing anyway.

The main reason why people always study last minute is because they know that studying is going to be hard-work, they might lack confidence in their abilities, have a false sense of security, feel tired when wanting to study, fallen victim to the planning fallacy, believe that they are going to fail/have negative thinking patterns and/or are not interested in the topics that need to be studied.

1. You Know It Is Going To Be Hard Work

The number one reason why people always study last minute is because they procrastinate it due to the fact they know it’s going to be hard work. Procrastination usually stems from having negative feelings towards a task and in this case the negative feeling is that it is going to be hard work.

How To Stop Leaving Studying To The Last Minute When The Work Is Hard

Create A Study Revision Timetable To Stop Procrastination

Creating a study revision timetable is a great way to overcome study procrastination as it lets you plan out your time so you have no excuse not to do something.

To make an effective revision timetable you should not look forward and try to predict the future by allocating time blocks in a calendar for revision but instead make a list of topics in a table system with another two columns for date studied and a rating of understanding. This system encourages long term, spaced out learning and also organises studying according to areas that students are not as confident in and also by the amount of time that has elapsed since they last revised. 

You might be interest in reading my full article on How To Make A Super Effective Revision Timetable!

2. You Believe You Are Going To Fail

You might also be putting off studying until it’s too late because you either:

1. Have convinced yourself that you are going to fail
2. Or you are feeling the pressure of the threat of failing the exam

Due to these beliefs you feel that you will potentially be humiliated publicly and decide that you won’t put the effort into studying. You probably believe that it is better to not study at all and blame that as the reason for failing rather than putting in all the effort and there being a chance that you will fail. This reason stems back to number one – you know studying is going to be hard work.

In addition, you are probably thinking about the multiple ‘painful’ outcomes i.e. the pain of studying vs. the pain of failing. You become immobilised in the choice of the two evils and then continue to procrastinate as you believe that one of those ‘failure’ outcomes is going to become your reality.

How To Overcome The Belief That You Are Going To Fail

Adopt A Positive, Growth Mindset

People who have these thoughts about failure generally have a negative, fixed mindset. These people focus on what is wrong with what they are doing and believe that they are powerless to change things. If you have a pessimistic mindset, you really should change it around. Think optimistically by:

• Focusing on what is right about what you are doing
• Being grateful for what you have
• Looking at the bright side

Positive thinkers are less stressed and are more likely to achieve their goals. If you adopt a positive mindset you are much less likely to start thinking about failure and if you do start thinking about it you have the right tools to overcome it. I know you have probably heard about the positive mindset many times before and are brushing it off right now, however it is really the key to success in general and also specifically in building long term study habits over ending up studying last minute.

You might want to ask yourself some of these questions next time you find yourself thinking that you are going to fail your exam:

• Why do I believe that I am going to fail this exam?
• What are some small steps I can take today to work towards success?
• What am I already really good at that is going to be in this exam?
• How am I going to plan the rest of my week to study for my weaker areas so I can improve?
• What are my long term plans to improve in this subject?

3. You Have A False Sense Of Security

Another trap that many students fall into that makes them study last minute is the false sense of security. There are two main reasons for this:

1. You aren’t aware that you only use passive learning methods and can’t reproduce information in an exam situation
2. You did really well on your last exam and believe that you can keep it up without much effort

How To Overcome Having A False Sense Of Security

Use Active Recall Study Methods

Active recall is the process of remembering information by moving information from short-term to long-term memory so you can easily draw on it again. In short, it is when you test or quiz yourself and you can reproduce facts without supporting material.

There are many methods for adopting active style learning into your study routine such as:

• Using flashcards with spaced repetition
• Making mini-quizzes
• Doing past papers in exam conditions (no textbooks or google to help you and under timed conditions)
• ‘Brain Dump’ – writing down everything you know about a topic onto a piece of paper without supporting materials

You might also be interested in reading my article on How To Study Flashcards With The Leitner Method, a really effective active recall method!

4. You Feel Very Tired All The Time

The reality of being a student for many people is surviving on caffeine and pulling all nighters to get assignments completed just before the due date.

But students who force themselves through days, weeks or months of not much sleep are deteriorating their motivation and vigilance, critical aspects of studying for exams. It becomes very difficult to maintain attention over time, impacts motivation to study and encourages negative thinking patterns.

It’s a viscous cycle. You always feel to tired to properly study so you put it of until later. But it quickly creeps up to you that later is the day before the exam or assignment is due. And then you end up staying up late again, studying last minute.

How To Overcome Studying Last Minute Because You Are Sleep Deprived

Set An End-Of-The-Day Alarm To Fix Your Sleep Schedule

To stop studying last minute when you are sleep deprived is to break your bad sleep cycle. I know it is really hard – there are always many other things that you would rather stay up and do over going to sleep.

Firstly set yourself an alarm for 30 minutes before the time that you should go to sleep to get your full 8-10 hours of sleep. When the alarm goes off, put all your devices away so you aren’t affected by the blue light preventing you to fall asleep. Do your nighttime routine and then just go to bed. It’s really that simple.

5. You Have Fallen Victim To The Planning Fallacy

“The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed.”

Wikipedia

Have you ever filled out 50 to-do list tasks in your schedule without breaks before?

We all fall victim to overestimating what we can accomplish in a short amount of time. Take a look at the image below. In your head your plan is going to be straight forward and smooth rolling like the top box, but in reality it’s going to be a long, hard and bumpy ride.

How To Overcome The Planning Fallacy

Try The 50% Rule

The 50% rule is when you estimate how long it is going to take to do something. This estimate should be as realistic as possible. Once you are finished estimating you need to add 50% of time to it.

For example, you might have an exam for maths coming up. You want to study differentiation of exponential functions today. You think it will realistically take 40 minutes to study. Now you add 50% to it – 20 minutes. You allocate 60 minutes to studying maths.

By using this method you will build a more accurate picture of how much time it will take you to prepare for an exam. With this knowledge you can better plan out your time and spread your studying over multiple days.

6. You Lack Confidence

You may always study at the last minute because you procrastinate it due to your lack of confidence in the subject and consequent thoughts that you will fail. See number two for advice on how to overcome this and start studying!

7. You Aren’t Really Interested In The Topics

It’s tough when you don’t have a real passion for a subject. It makes studying for those exams a big chore. But it doesn’t have to be…

How To Stop Studying Last Minute When You Aren’t Interested In The Topics

Make Studying As Fun As Possible

One of the only ways to get through a boring subject is to make studying fun and hopefully this will encourage you to start studying earlier instead of the night before. You can make it fun by:

• Forming study groups with your friends
• Using food trail rewards – let yourself eat a small lolly, e.g. an m&m, after reading a full page or chapter from a textbook
• Watching videos or documentaries about the topic
• Using mnemonic devices
• Writing songs about the information

You are always going to come across subjects that are boring but compulsory or you feel are not relevant to your life at all. It’s best to just try and make the most out of those situations. Be positive as you never know you might learn something very interesting or useful from it.

Further Reading

• How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To
• 14 Must Have Study Session Essentials
• How Top Students Study *Secret Methods Revealed*
• How To Learn A Language By Watching Netflix