How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays. Paul Dickerson
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Try a different perspective
What is the inner dialogue like when you procrastinate? If you try to bully or frighten yourself into working, that may work for a time – at least while the threat feels real and imminent – but what happens as soon as the threat dissipates? Often frightening yourself into working is only effective when the deadline is so close you can almost smell it. The snag is that this can create a cycle where you ignore the threat until it is – once again – the very last minute. Then the cycle starts all over again with your next piece of work.
One psychological concept that is relevant here is reactance. This has different meanings, one of which relates to ‘impedance in an AC circuit’, but here we are thinking of psychological reactance. Silvia (2005: 277) draws on Brehm (1966) in defining reactance as; ‘a motivational state aimed at restoring the threatened freedom’. In other words, if someone tells us we can’t do something – depending on how we relate to the person telling us – we may be more inclined to do it, so that we can assert the freedom which we feel is threatened. The message that you must do your essay now, even if it is coming from yourself or some ‘motivational’ slogan in font size 72, can work in a similar way – you can feel that it is a threat to your freedom to do all the other things you might want to do right now instead. So, one way of asserting your freedom is to do just what you feel you are being told not to do, just like people who deliberately walk on grass that they are told to keep off, or who speak in a silent study section of a library. Your defiant assertion of freedom is all the easier when the very same screen used for writing your essay can be the gateway to assert your hedonistic independence at two clicks, or three at most, and the essay is left behind as you are wafted up in a flight of fancy.
This is such a big factor in terms of writing – or not writing – essays, that we should stay with it for a moment longer. Before the temptation to flee proves too strong to resist, consider some ideas that might give us another perspective on our essay writing and our procrastination.
Your escape is not so great after all
Most of us would sooner deny or ignore the idea that attempting to escape from our academic work is futile. In fact, if you can read through the next few pages without desperately scrambling towards your habitual distraction, then that is kind of amazing. Most of us have different things we like to do to assert our freedom. It may be obviously hedonistic, or have some semblance of wider value, but it takes us from what we ‘should do’ to what we ‘want to do’. Or at least we construct it as a contrast between ‘should’ and ‘want’. Perhaps you can get curious here? What really happens when you get distracted? How long does it last? What do you get from it and what do you lose? Maybe becoming mindful and aware – without becoming harsh or judgemental – will help. Why not acknowledge that you want to be distracted, but carry on working a little bit more than usual – just to see what it’s like. You might have got this freedom thing all wrong. Without getting too paranoid, maybe several hundred thousand people want you (and others like you) to be distracted so you can consume whatever they are offering. Maybe staying with your work is a much more potent statement of your independence and freedom.
Your work can actually be fun
This sounds like a prototypical nurse telling you that you ‘won’t feel a thing’, but this time it is true! There is a real satisfaction in getting a task done – if that task has meaning and value. The weird thing is that the other side of the mountain of distraction is where most of the treasure lies. Essay writing is, typically, sufficiently open ended – usually we are not merely completing a pre-set template – that it is both intimidating and meaningful. Why deny yourself this freedom? You may want to feel free to consume the games, videos and other output created by others, but what about the freedom to create yourself? In this essay, right now, you can create – consuming can be great, but creating can be greater.
You can flip back to work now
Most of us get distracted plenty of times – no matter how perfect we sound when spilling out advice to others. One of the real myths that crushes those of us who know distraction well is this one: ‘it’s too late now’. I would take this head on. This is the threat to your freedom. Use your reactance on this myth; it is trying to deny your freedom to go back to the work you were distracted from. Don’t argue with it. Prove it wrong by switching back to your work, not after you get to the next level, finish watching this episode or finally work out whether going to sleep in wet socks prevents colds or causes them. The door is open – step back in, don’t feel bad, don’t tell yourself off, just try a completely non-threatening five or ten minutes of work. Often, in the midst of distraction, we tell ourselves, ‘just five more minutes, then I’ll start work again’. Use the same method to charm your way back to your work, just committing yourself to five or ten minutes of work can be all that it takes to massively transform your writing. Your essay is not the big, oppressive authority figure; it is your creative freedom. You can enjoy it, so allow yourself to do just that.
Ace your assignment Your phone and you
If your phone is in a different room from you, what will happen? Will you experience an existential crisis, your thumb poised over the space in your hand where the phone should be? Perhaps your phone will shutdown or explode, never to work again?
You, like me, may find that sometimes it is extremely helpful not to have your phone within arm’s reach of you. You can meet up again after this brief separation without any hard feelings or spontaneous combustion on either side. The technology is amazing, but it is also the most potent technology for distraction and delivering you to adverts that has been devised so far.
Why not use that concept of reactance again here? Are you going to let the wealthiest companies in the world determine what you do? Your essay, or your degree, doesn’t actually matter to them, as long as you stay hooked on your phone long enough to be delivered to the (increasingly) bespoke adverts.
It is hard to get the happy medium of enjoying our phones as a phenomenally useful and fun tool without paying a heavy price in terms of wasted hours checking social media or seeing videos of someone who claims their parrot is more intelligent than they are. But our day-by-day, hour-by-hour choices, which seem so small in themselves, really do add up to something significant.
If putting your phone in another room frees you up to write, it is worth it. And your phone will forgive you, I am sure.
You’ve already started
Do you find yourself building up the start of your essay? It is so easy to think I’ll start when I… fully understand the title/have completed all the reading/have really understood all of the issues/have got what I am going to write really clear. These are all understandable and sometimes backed up by the guidance that we pick up and pass on. But what really is an essay? An academic essay is a medium for displaying your scholarly, or learned, thinking about the issues identified in the title. If you have these thoughts, if you are reading this sentence, it looks like you have started your thinking which is part of and central to writing the essay. The essay does not start when your word count clocks up a certain number; it starts when we engage with the ideas that are relevant to the essay. So pat yourself on the back and encourage yourself like you would encourage someone you care about – if you are thinking, you are essaying. Perhaps you can jot down your thoughts.
Confusion is a friend not an imposter
It is easy to hate confusion – perhaps especially now when Siri, Google and Alexa instantly answer any questions that flit through our minds the moment we voice them. But wait, confusion is good – or at least constructive confusion is good. Confusion is constructive if we articulate it and use it to inform our thinking, reading and writing. Look at these three confused reactions in