I used to procrastinate because I was bored. If I could pull straight A’s like rabbits from a magician’s hat, at the 11th hour, why should I spend six weeks’ putzing around with the thing?

One solution: artificial deadline pressure. Fool yourself into thinking the assignment is due earlier. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at lying to myself or others.

Another idea: more challenging (more interesting) assignments.

And finally, checkpoints: smaller deadlines for defined chunks of the work, if possible. The old “how do you eat an elephant?” question — break a big ol’ boring task into little bite-sized pieces.

Some people will use the entire six weeks to do the same project. There’s nothing wrong with them; this is how much of the world functions. Neither student/worker/human should be punished for it, unless they fail to deliver satisfactory results. (This is why I always preferred salary to hourly pay. There was no way I could “look busy” 8 hours out of every work day, and no way I could kill myself with the all-out effort required under deadline pressure if I had to keep it up 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year. It’s not realistic. No one works like that. But I’d have felt guilty for not giving 110% every hour I was clocked in, if I were paid by the hour. Instead, I only had to feel guilty if I didn’t deliver on results.