In my last post I shared research showing that waiting too long to prepare for the EPPP could directly diminish your likelihood of success. We saw that because of “decay theory”, your optimum time for taking the EPPP is as close to graduation as possible.
In this post I wish to continue that discussion by looking at why we procrastinate and what you can do to avoid it.
Are You Overwhelmed?
One of the factors that often motivates us to procrastinate is a sense of feeling overwhelmed. For example, you consider all the EPPP prep necessary before the exam, and the thought of it makes you feel utterly exhausted. “How can I possibly learn all of this?” you think. “I don’t even know where to begin!”
These types of feelings lead to procrastination. When we are overwhelmed by a job we need to do, the tendency is for us to put it off and delay making a start. However, if we wait until something has become urgent to tackle it, then we no longer have the luxury of attending to it at a convenient pace. The project we have delayed to begin then becomes all-consuming and pushes other things out.
Learn to Break Jobs Down Into Parts
The problem with this type of procrastination is that it often arises from thinking of a job as a whole rather than as a series of manageable parts.
Imagine you had a party over the weekend that left a tremendous mess in the kitchen. You wake on Monday morning, think about all the cleaning that has to be done, and you feel overwhelmed. Quite naturally, you may conclude that you don’t have time for it. That’s an understandable human reaction. But there is another way to think about the work you need to do. If you think about just one part (say, getting half the dishes done, or working on it for only ten minutes), then you may find you have time to at least start.
Many projects are like this: they can only be completed by breaking them down into parts that we tackle as time allows. We may not have time to finish the project right away, but we do certainly have time to start it.
Flexible EPPP Prep
It’s the same way with your EPPP prep. If you’re waiting until your schedule will allow you to devote your entire life to it, that day may never arrive. But if you can’t devote your entire day to EPPP test preparation, can you manage three hours a day? Two hours? Twenty minutes?
Our program at TSM is designed to accommodate this type of flexibility. Using our online tools, you can stop procrastinating and custom-design your program to fit your own schedule, specifying how many hours each week you are able to dedicate to study. By customizing the EPPP prep around your own schedule, the TSM program will make sure you have adequate time to complete TSM’s structured Final Review prior to sitting for your licensure exam.