should i do my easy or hard homework first

Hardest or Easiest Work First? What the Research Shows

Hardest or easiest work first? It’s one of the largest questions in productivity management, and one that has been under debate or decades. 

There are two patterns of thought on this topic. Some productivity experts believe that by starting on your quickest, simplest tasks first, you build momentum that carries you through to the harder tasks. However, other experts believe that completing your hardest tasks first is the key to getting things done more efficiently.  Research shows that people who execute their most difficult tasks first are generally more productive and high achieving than those who start easy and work their way up.  

Since productivity is a cornerstone of successful business, there have been many studies performed to analyze what methodologies make people most productive. Read on to find out what their research revealed. 

If you are looking for the best study tools out there, you should read our article on the best study tools to enhance your studying at the link below:

The Ultimate Study Tools You Must Use to Succeed!

Why Is Doing the Easy Thing First Is Less Productive

Completing the easiest items first is less productive. This idea is reinforced by behavioral research that shows that starting with easier tasks first is not helpful overall.

The data shows this is the case even though it can initially feel good to take the path of least resistance in an attempt to get the ball rolling. The human brain is wired to feel positive about short-term rewards, so we are more inclined to take actions that result in gaining those short-term rewards. 

These are the basic reasons found by behavioral research that doing easier things before hard things in a productivity workflow is counterproductive: 

• The stress of putting off a difficult task negatively affects productivity towards all other tasks performed. 

Scientific studies have shown that the dread of having to execute a major task requires a large amount of subconscious focus.

The weight of having a major task on your mind can make you lose focus on the task at hand. This loss of focus makes the task take longer to complete. It can also lead to the task completing less effectively. 

• People make the choice to complete easier tasks first not on the logical basis of what methodology is more productive, but on what method makes them feel better. 

The choice to do easier tasks first is rarely made with productivity in mind. 

Rather, people choose this workflow method because it elicits positive emotions that produce a short-term psychological high, not because it works better. 

• Humans have a psychological tendency to enjoy experiences that improve over time. 

When you start an easy task and start building up to harder and harder tasks, this can create negative psychological feedback. 

Rather than building momentum, this process psychologically feels akin to pushing a boulder that gets heavier and heavier the further you push it. The increasing difficulty of subsequent tasks is an exhausting process, not an empowering one and has a poor effect on overall productivity. 

• Smaller tasks are generally easier to defer, delegate, or avoid entirely than large tasks if time or motivation runs low. 

Difficult tasks tend to be important tasks, and you’re less likely to be able to avoid them without suffering negative consequences.

However, if a person does their difficult tasks first, it is simpler to postpone or delegate small tasks. 

• People have a limited amount of energy in any given week to produce or perform. 

After a 50-hour workweek, behavioral scientists have found that the work output of an employee workforce drops off a cliff. Once the number of hours passes 55 hours, work output is almost nil due to exhaustion. 

The impact of this decline in being effective is that people who work 70 hours a week are achieving next to nothing in the extra fifteen hours they choose to work. Doing hard tasks first ensures there is enough physical and cognitive energy to complete these important tasks.

• It is more productive to consider whether you need to perform small tasks at all rather than do them first. 

One of the greatest hacks of productivity is not to perform your to-do list more efficiently, but to shorten the overall number of tasks on it. 

Shorter tasks lend themselves to evaluation easier as they are typically simpler than longer, more-involved tasks. Before doing any task, a two-step evaluation should be performed to determine if:

• The task is worth doing.
• If the task is worth doing, am I the best person to do it. 

It is both easier to evaluate the validity of doing a task and whether you are the best person to do it with smaller tasks. This process alone can save you a significant amount of time and energy.

• The best measure of productivity is the quality of tasks performed, not quantity. 

For example, performing ten different small tasks to organize your office is great. However, if these small tasks stop you from meeting a deadline on a major customer deliverable, they weren’t worth doing.

Taking the time to access the relative importance of each task as well as its estimated difficulty and duration is essential.

• People performing small tasks tend to multitask, and multitasking is not productive–it only feels productive. 

Studies show that people who multitask are generally less productive (and less accurate in their work) than those who monotask. 

The human brain is not good at multi-tasking. Our brains are tremendously powerful and great at many things but multi-tasking is not one of them. If fact, studies have linked heavy multi-tasking to poorer performance on simple memory tasks. Researchers have also seen in brain scans that the human brain struggles significantly with multitasking.

Even though it feels more productive, performing a batch of small tasks is typically not as productive as getting that hardest task out of the way first. 

• Completing smaller tasks first is constructive procrastination, and destroys productivity.  

If your goal is to complete important work consistently and you are procrastinating, you are not going to produce consistently. 

Cutting through resistance to complete hard tasks first eliminates procrastination and increases your general efficiency. 

Why Do People Choose To Work on Easy Tasks First?

The reason the “path of least resistance” exists as an idiom is because people generally have a tendency to procrastinate on difficult tasks and perform smaller tasks instead. Completing smaller tasks generates a feeling of productivity. 

Behavioral scientists call this tendency  “task completion bias.”  

When you succumb to task completion bias, you feel more productive because they are getting a larger quantity of smaller tasks done. However, as these tasks have less intrinsic value, you end up being ultimately less productive. 

People who choose the path of least resistance are driven by the satisfaction derived from completing a task. However, this is dangerous to productivity as the satisfaction derived is not coupled appropriately to the level of importance of the task itself.

Why Do the Hard Thing First? 

Productivity gurus like to quote Mark Twain’s famous advice towards productivity, which says to “eat the frog” or perform your hardest task right off the bat. This advice holds water in both behavioral research and anecdotal observation.

In their exploration of behavioral work analysis, scientists have found the following:

Most successful and productive workers consistently put their most difficult tasks first ahead of smaller tasks. 

In productivity circles, this concept is usually called a Most Important Tasks (MIT) list. 

Prioritization is essential in deciding what tasks to do first. While most people do what they feel like doing at the moment, it is better to complete the most important tasks first.

Here are some of the reasons why it is more productive to execute your most difficult tasks first: 

• Doing the hardest task first means you are more likely to complete it. 

The overwhelming majority of people will be less motivated at the end of their day than at the beginning of it due to decision fatigue and erosion of physical and mental energy. 

Hard tasks should be performed first because that is when you have the most energy.

• Willpower has a ceiling and doesn’t last.

You use willpower throughout the day to force yourself to do everything from picking what you want for lunch to brushing your teeth before you leave for work. By the time you get home, your brain is exhausted from forcing you to act. 

The limits of willpower are the reason why people who are trying to get into exercise should work out first thing in the morning.

The reality is fewer people have the willpower to go out and exercise after a full day of executive function performing other work. 

• Getting the hardest task out of the way allows you to coast and creates a positive mood, which increases productivity. 

Happy people get more things done, and few things make a person happier than knowing they no longer have to dread a hard task. 

The relief you feel when you’ve gotten a high-value item checked off your to-do list sets the tone for the rest of your day. You are more likely to finish your other work in a good mood and avoid the emotional demoralization that comes with decision fatigue. 

• Productivity follows the Pareto principle. 

In the  Pareto principle , the concept is that 80% of your results are the result of 20% of your work. In other words, it’s not the amount of time you spend working. Rather, it is about focusing on the tasks that matter, that move the needle.

By this principle, which echoes across economic theory and management, if you only achieve the two hardest tasks on your to-do list, you’ve still produced more quality work than you would have if you had completed the other eight tasks combined. 

Applying the Pareto principle to task management, tackling and completing only the most important tasks will have a superior impact on your productivity. In other words, you get more “bang for your buck” in completing larger, more important tasks than lesser, smaller tasks. This principle even applies if you do more smaller tasks. As mentioned earlier, measure your productivity based on the importance of task, not quantity of task. Tim Ferriss covered the benefits of the Pareto principle in his epic book The Four Hour Workweek . If you have not read this book yet, you owe it to yourself to do so.

• Putting off the hardest task is not just unproductive; it has the potential to create more work. 

Harder work is work that is easier to screw up, and if you are tired at the end of the day, you’re more likely to make mistakes.

Having to fix mistakes just adds more work on top of the work you already had, so it’s the opposite of productivity. You’re growing your work rather than paring it down. 

Tips and Tricks for Completing Your Hardest Work First

• Break difficult tasks into a batch of smaller tasks. 

Most hard tasks can be broken down into smaller, simpler tasks. Breaking the complex task down into simpler tasks allows you to use task completion bias to your advantage. You are essentially tricking your brain into believing it is doing easy tasks and allows you to build momentum. A great way of breaking your tasks down into smaller tasks is mind-mapping. Mindmapping allows you to create a relational diagram of your task and its related subtasks. I wrote a blog post on mind-mapping that you can find at the link below:

Link to Mindmapping Blog Post

• Prioritize your to-do list and pick the top hardest or high-quality tasks. Those are your most important things. 

The heart of true productivity lies in knowing what it is you need to accomplish versus what you just think you need to do. This philosophy is how you determine task value, which determines how productive you are. If you can identify the  top two or three most important tasks  in your list, these tasks will hold the same productivity value as the rest of the list combined. 

Even if you only do these two or three things and nothing else, you will have been extremely productive in terms of task value. 

• Set up your difficult tasks ahead of time. 

Because you’ll already be dreading the task, you don’t want to put any psychological barriers up between yourself and initiating the first steps to executing it. 

If you need to write a paper, make sure you have all the research gathered beforehand. If you’re tackling a huge gardening project, make sure all the tools you need are ready to go first thing. If you’re trying to the gym, lay your gym clothes out the night before. 

• Set a timer. 

Often the anticipation of a difficult task is more difficult than the task itself. Set a timer for twenty minutes and tell yourself you must execute the task until the timer goes off. If the timer goes off, you will be free to take a five-minute break. 

The Pomodoro Technique uses relatively short work bursts and breaks to help overcome the mental overhead of getting started. For more information on the Pomodoro Technique, check out our blog post (link below): 

Link to Pomodoro Technique Blog Post

• Set your priority tasks the night before. 

By doing so, this will put them at the forefront of your mind, and part of your brain will be considering them subconsciously while you sleep as well. Humans solve a lot of our problems while we’re sleeping.

Setting your priority tasks ahead of time takes advantage of theta brain waves, which allow you to solve creative problems more easily. 

If you reflect on tasks in a theta state, you may be more likely to come up with creative answers to make the work less difficult. Doing this can increase your overall productivity through outside-the-box shortcuts. 

• Make sure your difficult task is well-defined. 

A lot of decision fatigue comes from deciding how to do something, rather than what to do. This indecision keeps difficult executive actions that are complicated from being started without great resistance. 

If you are about to perform a difficult task, write the task down, and list all the things you need to do related to it. An abstract premise like “clean the house” can be daunting to the mind, but if you write fifty small household chores, you will feel less intimidated.

• Use the power of habit. 

Make a point to consistently keep track of your most important tasks, and consistently do the hardest things you’ve prioritized first. Willpower is a lot like a muscle power–the more you use it, the larger reserve of it you have to draw from.

One way to do this is to write your most important tasks in a small journal every night, and mark them off the next day. By keeping a record, you can use ritual to reinforce your motivation and make you more productive overall through consistent performance. 

• Stay away from social media and other distractions. 

Doing the hard thing first thing means doing it first thing. Do not pass GO; do not collect two hundred dollars. Straight to eating the frog for you. 

It is very easy to get drawn into browsing Facebook or Netflix, reading a blog, or reading the news rather than getting work done. Before you know it, you will have lost hours of productivity. A great way to block out distractions is to use an application like Focus to temporarily block you from accessing certain websites. Focus is a Mac application and is part of the great Setapp service. Setapp is a service that, for a very low monthly price, allows you to download and use over 150 Mac apps. For more information on Focus, click this link .

Do not execute any action before your hardest task for the best results, especially if it could be considered a leisure activity. Save that as a reward for when you complete your task. You’ll be working on completing it that much more quickly.  

Final Thoughts

Productivity is not about how many tasks you get done. Rather, it is about getting  valuable  tasks done as  efficiently  as possible. Everything else is unimportant. Longer tasks are typically more important than smaller tasks. 

Everybody has days where they are running around like a chicken with their head cut off, trying to do a dozen petty or inconsequential things at once. That feeling compounds when you realize you haven’t gotten anything valuable done. The key to true productivity isn’t the quantity of your work, but the quality of it. 

Assessing quality (especially the quality and value of your own work) requires more forethought and preparation. Research shows that working more productively, as opposed to simply working more, leads to higher levels of objective success.  

A decade of data reveals that heavy multitaskers have reduced memory

Solutions Architect

Jimmy McTiernan is the owner/author of The Productive Engineer, a website dedicated to helping people master productivity applications. Jimmy also is the creator of The Productive Engineer YouTube channel.

Similar Posts

How to Improve Your Study Skills Right Now!

Having a hard time studying? Looking to improve your study skills? We got you covered with our guide to improving your study skills immediately!

Is White Noise Good for Studying? We Have the Answer Here!

Studying with white noise is a contentious topic. Some people say it helps them focus and perform better, while others think white noise might interfere with their studying. In this article, we will discuss white noise and whether or not it can be beneficial to your studying habits. So let’s answer the question you came…

Tips for Using Google Keep Like A Pro

Google keep is a note-taking application. It is a versatile app that offers a variety of tools that helps to make you more organized and productive. As Google Keep is developed by Google, it automatically syncs to your Google drive. Syncing with Google is probably the best thing about Google Keep. It helps make using…

What is Marginal Productivity? Learn its Importance in Economics

Welcome to the fascinating world of economics! Today, we’re going to dive into a key concept that often comes up: Marginal Productivity. If you’ve ever wondered what this term means and how it plays a crucial role in understanding our economy, you’ve come to the right place. This article is designed to explain Marginal Productivity…

Stay Awake While Studying: Strategies for Concentration

It’s hard to stay awake studying, especially when you are studying for a test or taking an exam. You may be wondering what you can do to improve concentration levels and study longer. Here are some great strategies that will help you focus!

How to Study Last Minute for a Test Effectively

Have you procrastinated and now are struggling with how to get ready for your exam at the last possible minute. We have been there and have some tips and tricks that can help you out.

Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Organizations Nov 4, 2019

Why you should skip the easy wins and tackle the hard task first, new research shows that you and your organization lose out when you procrastinate on the difficult stuff..

Bradley Staats R. Staats

Maryam Kouchaki

Francesca Gino

Yevgenia Nayberg

Let’s say you’re slogging through a hectic workweek. Your to-do list is crammed with minor tasks like answering emails or submitting invoices, as well as complex projects such as revamping your marketing strategy. In the midst of the chaos, are you more likely to choose the easy or hard tasks?

If your intuition says the easy ones, you’re in good company. Recent research by Maryam Kouchaki , an associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, and colleagues suggests that people gravitate toward simpler tasks when struggling with a heavy workload. However, they find that the strategy doesn’t pay off in the long run. “Short term, the person could actually feel satisfied, less anxious,” Kouchaki says. But avoiding hard tasks indefinitely also cuts off opportunities to learn and improve one’s skills. “It’s not in the interests of the individual, the group, or the organization in the long run,” she says. “That learning part is super critical.”

To ward off this temptation, managers should encourage workers to tackle difficult tasks and break projects into bite-sized pieces so that employees still get the satisfaction of completing each step, Kouchaki says.

“You have to do more careful planning to make sure people are given opportunities to learn and are challenged,” she says. An employee who finishes a lot of easy tasks each day may seem productive, but “that’s not ultimately what matters.”

Should You Do Easy or Hard Tasks First?

The idea for the study arose when Kouchaki chatted with Bradley Staats of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School about their own tendency to delay hard tasks in favor of easy ones. For instance, they might prep to teach a routine class rather than write a paper.“When we are overwhelmed and busy, we just go with easier tasks, and the difficult tasks tend to pile up,” Kouchaki says.

The researchers wondered if this bias was widespread. If so, what were the short- and long-term performance effects?

Breaking down complex projects into small milestones can help give workers the completion high they get from easy tasks while still supplying the challenge and opportunities for development.

To find out, they collaborated with Diwas KC at Emory University and focused on task choices among doctors at a hospital. The researchers obtained data on 84 doctors who treated more than 233,000 patients in an East Coast emergency room from 2005 to 2010. As patients entered the ER, a nurse assigned them an acuity level. Higher acuity likely corresponded to more difficult cases. Physicians then monitored the queue and chose which case to take. While they took the acuity level of the ailment or injury into consideration, they likely also considered factors such as whether other doctors might be better suited to see the patient, how long the patient had been waiting, and whether they had the bandwidth to do a good job, Kouchaki says. The researchers estimated the physicians’ workload based on the number of patients already under their care. And the team got a sense of how tired each doctor felt in two ways. First, they noted the number of cases the physician had already finished during that shift. Second, they examined a measure called relative value units (RVUs). Hospitals and Medicare use RVUs to capture factors such as the time, skill, and effort devoted to each case. Doctors who had completed more RVUs earlier in their shift likely felt more depleted, the researchers reasoned. The team then tracked how the doctors’ decisions appeared to affect their performance in both the short and long term.

A False Sense of Progress with Easier Tasks

As the researchers suspected, having a higher workload increased the likelihood that a doctor would choose an easier patient. Each additional patient under their care was linked to an 8 percent higher chance of selecting a lower-acuity case. In addition, the more RVUs a doctor had completed earlier in their shift, the more likely they were to pick easier patients.

In the short term, this strategy seemed to boost productivity. The larger was the share of a physician’s case load devoted to easy cases, the more patients they got through in a shift. “You feel like you’re making more progress,” Kouchaki says.

But the doctors’ long-term performance suffered.

The researchers analyzed each physician’s track record over the six-year study period. Not surprisingly, doctors’ service times tended to drop as they completed more cases over time, suggesting that they were getting more efficient. But when physicians included a greater share of difficult cases in their overall case load, the “speed-up effect” was stronger, the researchers found. In addition, physicians who took on a higher fraction of tough cases tended to generate more RVUs per patient—a proxy for productivity—in the future. “Physicians who are picking up difficult patients are the ones who learn over time, and they generate more value for the hospital,” Kouchaki says.

Feeling Fatigued

The hospital study was intriguing, but it had a couple of shortcomings. First, it wasn’t a randomized experiment, so the researchers couldn’t say for sure whether the heavy workload caused doctors to pick easy cases. Second, it didn’t fully explain the reason for the phenomenon. Was it fatigue that led the doctors to choose simple patients during an otherwise taxing shift? What about the desire to feel a sense of progress, or feelings of stress? To investigate, the team conducted a second study online. They recruited 365 participants who were asked to read a sideways picture of a book page and type as much of the text as possible in three minutes. Half the group was asked to simultaneously listen to a song and count the number of times that certain words were used, increasing the workload dramatically. Afterward, all participants filled out a survey to report their sense of progress, fatigue, and stress level. Then each person had to choose a second task: one they were told was relatively easy and the other somewhat difficult. In the high-workload group, 76 percent of participants picked the “easy” second task, compared to 64 percent of the low-workload group. The researchers also analyzed the survey answers. The less progress a participant felt they had made, or the more tired they felt, the more likely they were to choose the easy task. However, stress didn’t appear to play a role. “It was more about progress and fatigue,” Kouchaki says.

These results suggest that managers should educate employees about the importance of tackling hard tasks for professional growth, Kouchaki says. It’s about “nudging them and helping them to realize that this is so essential for their long-term learning and performance,” she says. Breaking down complex projects into small milestones can help give workers the completion high they get from easy tasks while still supplying the challenge and opportunities for development. However, researchers still need to study the effectiveness of such strategies. For instance, if doctors dislike being prodded to take harder cases, the policy might backfire, she says. In her own work, Kouchaki tries to ensure that she prioritizes difficult tasks. But that doesn’t mean she ignores the easy ones. After all, the menial labor still has to get done. And when she gets stuck on a hard project, sometimes she completes a simple task to give herself a boost. “Getting a sense of progress is so essential,” she says.

Professor of Management & Organizations

About the Writer Roberta Kwok is a freelance science writer based near Seattle.

Read the original

We’ll send you one email a week with content you actually want to read, curated by the Insight team.

If You Struggle To Start Or Complete Tasks, These 13 Tips Are For You

On Assignment For HuffPost

Raise your hand if you’ve been here: You know you have a small return window for a shirt you bought, but you put off bringing it back to the store day after day. Or maybe you’re buried in a project at work and can’t possibly imagine tackling another task at the moment ― even if it has a more urgent deadline.

There’s a name for when you are able to overcome this and get things done: task initiation. Think of it like your brain’s get-up-and-go. You have to turn the key, put the car in drive, then press on the gas — otherwise, you won’t actually go anywhere.

Your mind works the same way. Long to-do lists, big projects or annoying household chores can sometimes feel so overwhelming that starting your metaphorical ignition may seem impossible. But if you can’t get started, then you’ll be stuck with wheels spinning, frustrated that you’ve missed deadlines, were late again, or ignored assignments, texts, emails, dirty dishes ― or anything else you wanted to do but just couldn’t.

Anyone can struggle with task initiation, but it is especially prevalent in those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is associated with executive dysfunction . Chanel Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and CEO of Altus Home Counseling and Behavioral Services LLC in Detroit, has worked with several adults with ADHD or who need help with task initiation. In fact, even she needs help with this sometimes.

“I’ve found myself struggling with task initiation as well, including waiting until the last minute, missing deadlines, or neglecting things completely,” Johnson told HuffPost. “This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you are a perfectionist or the person other people look to to have it all together.”

There can be many reasons you struggle to get started on something, including fatigue, anxiety, perfectionism, procrastination, executive dysfunction and lack of motivation, according to Johnson.

Billy Roberts, a therapist at Focused Mind ADHD Counseling in Columbus, Ohio, said underlying anxieties are a big contributor to task initiation challenges. This includes fear of failure or perfectionism.

“Since their expectations of themselves are so high, they feel frozen when it’s time to get started,” he said. “Another possibility is a general sense of overwhelm. Having so many tasks or steps, it’s hard to know where to start.”

It can be so frustrating when you want to do something but can’t make yourself start. Luckily there are tools to help. Keep reading for these expert-backed things to try if you struggle with task initiation.

Practice chunking

“A great way to get started is a skill called ‘chunking,’ which means breaking things down into small actionable steps,” Roberts said. He also suggests people should “lower their expectations if they find a task too daunting and recognize that done is better than perfect .”

Kate McCann , a licensed mental health counselor who has a private counseling practice based in Worcester, Massachusetts, gives an example of how to break down an overwhelming task.

“Rather than think, ‘I have to clean the whole kitchen, and it’s a mess, I don’t know where to start, and it will take forever,’ break it down into, ‘to clean the kitchen, I have to first put away any food that’s been left out. Then get the dish rack emptied. Then I have to empty the dishwasher. Then I can get the dirty dishes loaded. Then I can wash the pots. Then I can wipe down the counters. Then I can watch the Real Housewives as a treat because I will be done,’” she said.

“Breaking the task down into small do-able parts that get paced out can help break down that wall of total resistance,” McCann added.

Transition to the task by doing another activity first

Kara Nassour, a therapist at Shaded Bough Counseling in Austin, Texas, suggests using another activity to help you transition to the task you want to do.

“If it’s hard to get off the couch to mow the lawn, it may be easier to get up, walk around the yard while listening to music, and then mow the lawn,” Nassour said . “If you’re struggle to start your homework, looking over your previous homework might help get your brain on track.”

Narrow your list down to just three items

Sometimes huge to-do lists can be overwhelming — not to mention impossible to get done in one day. Katie Ziskind, a therapist and owner of Wisdom Within Counseling , suggests picking three main goals.

“If you don’t have any clean laundry and you need clean clothes for work in the morning, but you still have some fruits, beans, rice, and pasta to eat, doing laundry will be more important than going food shopping,” she said. “Even if you think you’d find food shopping more fun than laundry.”

Ziskind added that “when you don’t feel motivated, that can come from feeling like you have too much responsibility.”

Redefine success

Telling yourself you have to finish everything to feel accomplished is setting yourself up for failure. Instead, Johnson recommends rethinking what you consider a win.

“Redefine success of a task to make it more manageable or easier,” she said. “An example is to tell yourself that washing half of the dishes today will count as a win instead of saying you have to do them all and clean the whole kitchen to feel accomplished.” Sometimes, just doing a few dishes is all you can do that day, and that’s OK.

Figure out exactly how much time it takes to do the task

Sometimes it’s hard to get started on something when we think it’ll take longer or shorter than it really will.

“Say your goal is to unload the dishwasher,” said Mary Hadley, a speech language pathologist who specializes in executive functioning challenges at Signpost Speech and Language Therapy in Austin, Texas . “Write down how long you think it will take, time yourself and see how long it really took.”

This isn’t so you can judge yourself on how long it took; rather, it’s a way to build awareness and get a better understanding of yourself. This can make it easier to plan your day and say no to things you really don’t have time for. Once your day feels more manageable, it can be easier to get started.

“Being unrealistic about what you can get done in a day often makes initiating tasks harder,” Johnson said. “You set yourself up for failure.”

Allow yourself a set time to be distracted

Distractions are going to happen, so embrace them. “Allow yourself to be distracted, but set a timer for your distractions,” Johnson recommended.

Ziskind suggested an alarm to stop yourself from scrolling Instagram or TikTok, “which can eat into the time you would have to complete tasks and do chores.”

Outsource help

There’s nothing wrong with asking for or seeking help. If there’s a task you find you consistently aren’t able to motivate yourself to do (like cleaning the bathrooms), then hire someone else to do it, if you can. Or offer a trade with a partner or friend. Ziskind said even doing this one time can help you.

Speak kindly to yourself

Cheer yourself on like you would a friend. “Speaking kindly to yourself, being your own cheerleader, and encouraging yourself are keys to starting tasks and getting tasks done,” Ziskind said.

Hadley agreed, encouraging people to regularly engage in “positive self-talk.” “This is a simple, free, and surprisingly powerful tool to implement into your daily life,” she said.

“Talk to your anxiety or distractibility as you are getting started on a task: ‘Hey anxiety, good to see you, thanks for stopping by but I don’t need you right now,’” Hadley explained. “Or, ‘I’m going to set a time and work on this for 20 minutes. I’ve got this.’ Remind yourself this is a process; it will take a while to feel accomplished and there is no such thing as perfection.”

Reward yourself

Ditch the old advice of doing the hardest thing on your list first. Instead, start and end with something fun.

“Do something that you want to do first and plan something that you are looking forward to do afterward as a reward,” Johnson said.

Focus on the end result

Make a vision board, write down your goals, or just picture what you want your end result to look like to keep you motivated.

“Have visual reminders of the overall goal,” Johnson said. “For example, if you have issues getting started on work projects, but you’re looking forward to moving up in the company, have a sheet of paper you can look at with your name and the title that you want behind it.”

If that doesn’t work, think about how happy you’ll feel in the short term. “Imagine how grateful your future self will be to your present self for getting it done,” McCann said. “I do chores on Thursday mornings so Weekend [Me] doesn’t have to do them, and Weekend [Me] LOVES Thursday [Me] for that.”

She explained that avoidance offers a momentary relief, but ultimately makes you feel worse at the end of the day. “No one wants to do the task now or feels like doing a chore but consider how you would like to feel afterward,” McCann continued, adding, “If you complete some small steps, and give yourself lots of praise for doing so, you will feel good about yourself at the end of the day.”

Pay attention to how you feel

Nassour suggested paying attention to how you feel when you find yourself avoiding tasks. “If you’re feeling tired, depressed, anxious, irritable, or in pain, that’s likely interfering with the task you meant to do,” she said. “Address the underlying problem and you will probably get more done.”

“Don’t criticize yourself for struggling to start tasks, because feelings of guilt and shame can make your brain associate that feeling with the task, and subconsciously make you want to avoid it in the future,” she added, suggesting treating the underlying anxieties or other issues.

Take care of your health

Making your health a priority can help make task initiation easier. “Take care of your mind and body,” Nassour said. “If you’re not getting enough food or sleep, or come home exhausted, or are in pain all the time, these things will interfere with getting things done.”

She added that a regular use of cannabis, alcohol or other substances could affect you as well, and limiting them “may improve your motivation in other areas of life.”

Reach out to a therapist for help

Therapy can help those struggling with task initiation. A cognitive behavioral therapy approach that reframes “negative cognitions and beliefs into positive ones helps you see a problem as less daunting and yourself as more competent, which helps you engage in different behaviors,” according to McCann.

Psychodynamic therapy, otherwise known as “why do I feel the way I feel” therapy, may help as well. Roberts explained it “can help with resolving any underlying emotional issues related to task initiation.”

Support Free Journalism

Consider supporting HuffPost starting at $2 to help us provide free, quality journalism that puts people first.

Can't afford to contribute? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you'll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

Discovering tricks to jump-start your brain and improve task initiation can be a game changer. We all have bad days or times we struggle with procrastination, but with some health maintenance, self-kindness and plenty of rewards, it can start to get easier.

From Our Partner

More in wellness, more in life.

Choose Your Test

• Search Blogs By Category
• College Admissions
• AP and IB Exams
• GPA and Coursework

How to Do Homework: 15 Expert Tips and Tricks

Coursework/GPA

Everyone struggles with homework sometimes, but if getting your homework done has become a chronic issue for you, then you may need a little extra help. That’s why we’ve written this article all about how to do homework. Once you’re finished reading it, you’ll know how to do homework (and have tons of new ways to motivate yourself to do homework)!

We’ve broken this article down into a few major sections. You’ll find:

• A diagnostic test to help you figure out why you’re struggling with homework
• A discussion of the four major homework problems students face, along with expert tips for addressing them
• A bonus section with tips for how to do homework fast

By the end of this article, you’ll be prepared to tackle whatever homework assignments your teachers throw at you .

So let’s get started!

How to Do Homework: Figure Out Your Struggles 

Sometimes it feels like everything is standing between you and getting your homework done. But the truth is, most people only have one or two major roadblocks that are keeping them from getting their homework done well and on time. 

The best way to figure out how to get motivated to do homework starts with pinpointing the issues that are affecting your ability to get your assignments done. That’s why we’ve developed a short quiz to help you identify the areas where you’re struggling. 

Take the quiz below and record your answers on your phone or on a scrap piece of paper. Keep in mind there are no wrong answers! 

1. You’ve just been assigned an essay in your English class that’s due at the end of the week. What’s the first thing you do?

A. Keep it in mind, even though you won’t start it until the day before it’s due  B. Open up your planner. You’ve got to figure out when you’ll write your paper since you have band practice, a speech tournament, and your little sister’s dance recital this week, too.  C. Groan out loud. Another essay? You could barely get yourself to write the last one!  D. Start thinking about your essay topic, which makes you think about your art project that’s due the same day, which reminds you that your favorite artist might have just posted to Instagram...so you better check your feed right now. 

2. Your mom asked you to pick up your room before she gets home from work. You’ve just gotten home from school. You decide you’ll tackle your chores: 

A. Five minutes before your mom walks through the front door. As long as it gets done, who cares when you start?  B. As soon as you get home from your shift at the local grocery store.  C. After you give yourself a 15-minute pep talk about how you need to get to work.  D. You won’t get it done. Between texts from your friends, trying to watch your favorite Netflix show, and playing with your dog, you just lost track of time! 

3. You’ve signed up to wash dogs at the Humane Society to help earn money for your senior class trip. You: 

A. Show up ten minutes late. You put off leaving your house until the last minute, then got stuck in unexpected traffic on the way to the shelter.  B. Have to call and cancel at the last minute. You forgot you’d already agreed to babysit your cousin and bake cupcakes for tomorrow’s bake sale.  C. Actually arrive fifteen minutes early with extra brushes and bandanas you picked up at the store. You’re passionate about animals, so you’re excited to help out! D. Show up on time, but only get three dogs washed. You couldn’t help it: you just kept getting distracted by how cute they were!

4. You have an hour of downtime, so you decide you’re going to watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show. You: 

A. Scroll through your social media feeds for twenty minutes before hitting play, which means you’re not able to finish the whole episode. Ugh! You really wanted to see who was sent home!  B. Watch fifteen minutes until you remember you’re supposed to pick up your sister from band practice before heading to your part-time job. No GBBO for you!  C. You finish one episode, then decide to watch another even though you’ve got SAT studying to do. It’s just more fun to watch people make scones.  D. Start the episode, but only catch bits and pieces of it because you’re reading Twitter, cleaning out your backpack, and eating a snack at the same time.

5. Your teacher asks you to stay after class because you’ve missed turning in two homework assignments in a row. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say: 

A. You planned to do your assignments during lunch, but you ran out of time. You decided it would be better to turn in nothing at all than submit unfinished work.  B. You really wanted to get the assignments done, but between your extracurriculars, family commitments, and your part-time job, your homework fell through the cracks.  C. You have a hard time psyching yourself to tackle the assignments. You just can’t seem to find the motivation to work on them once you get home.  D. You tried to do them, but you had a hard time focusing. By the time you realized you hadn’t gotten anything done, it was already time to turn them in. 

Like we said earlier, there are no right or wrong answers to this quiz (though your results will be better if you answered as honestly as possible). Here’s how your answers break down: 

• If your answers were mostly As, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is procrastination. 
• If your answers were mostly Bs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is time management. 
• If your answers were mostly Cs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is motivation. 
• If your answers were mostly Ds, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is getting distracted. 

Now that you’ve identified why you’re having a hard time getting your homework done, we can help you figure out how to fix it! Scroll down to find your core problem area to learn more about how you can start to address it. 

And one more thing: you’re really struggling with homework, it’s a good idea to read through every section below. You may find some additional tips that will help make homework less intimidating. 

How to Do Homework When You’re a Procrastinator  

Merriam Webster defines “procrastinate” as “to put off intentionally and habitually.” In other words, procrastination is when you choose to do something at the last minute on a regular basis. If you’ve ever found yourself pulling an all-nighter, trying to finish an assignment between periods, or sprinting to turn in a paper minutes before a deadline, you’ve experienced the effects of procrastination. 

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re in good company. In fact, one study found that 70% to 95% of undergraduate students procrastinate when it comes to doing their homework. Unfortunately, procrastination can negatively impact your grades. Researchers have found that procrastination can lower your grade on an assignment by as much as five points ...which might not sound serious until you realize that can mean the difference between a B- and a C+. 

Procrastination can also negatively affect your health by increasing your stress levels , which can lead to other health conditions like insomnia, a weakened immune system, and even heart conditions. Getting a handle on procrastination can not only improve your grades, it can make you feel better, too! 

The big thing to understand about procrastination is that it’s not the result of laziness. Laziness is defined as being “disinclined to activity or exertion.” In other words, being lazy is all about doing nothing. But a s this Psychology Today article explains , procrastinators don’t put things off because they don’t want to work. Instead, procrastinators tend to postpone tasks they don’t want to do in favor of tasks that they perceive as either more important or more fun. Put another way, procrastinators want to do things...as long as it’s not their homework! 

3 Tips f or Conquering Procrastination 

Because putting off doing homework is a common problem, there are lots of good tactics for addressing procrastination. Keep reading for our three expert tips that will get your homework habits back on track in no time. 

#1: Create a Reward System

Like we mentioned earlier, procrastination happens when you prioritize other activities over getting your homework done. Many times, this happens because homework...well, just isn’t enjoyable. But you can add some fun back into the process by rewarding yourself for getting your work done. 

Here’s what we mean: let’s say you decide that every time you get your homework done before the day it’s due, you’ll give yourself a point. For every five points you earn, you’ll treat yourself to your favorite dessert: a chocolate cupcake! Now you have an extra (delicious!) incentive to motivate you to leave procrastination in the dust. 

If you’re not into cupcakes, don’t worry. Your reward can be anything that motivates you . Maybe it’s hanging out with your best friend or an extra ten minutes of video game time. As long as you’re choosing something that makes homework worth doing, you’ll be successful. 

#2: Have a Homework Accountability Partner 

If you’re having trouble getting yourself to start your homework ahead of time, it may be a good idea to call in reinforcements . Find a friend or classmate you can trust and explain to them that you’re trying to change your homework habits. Ask them if they’d be willing to text you to make sure you’re doing your homework and check in with you once a week to see if you’re meeting your anti-procrastination goals. 

Sharing your goals can make them feel more real, and an accountability partner can help hold you responsible for your decisions. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to put off your science lab write-up until the morning before it’s due. But you know that your accountability partner is going to text you about it tomorrow...and you don’t want to fess up that you haven’t started your assignment. A homework accountability partner can give you the extra support and incentive you need to keep your homework habits on track. 

#3: Create Your Own Due Dates 

If you’re a life-long procrastinator, you might find that changing the habit is harder than you expected. In that case, you might try using procrastination to your advantage! If you just can’t seem to stop doing your work at the last minute, try setting your own due dates for assignments that range from a day to a week before the assignment is actually due. 

Here’s what we mean. Let’s say you have a math worksheet that’s been assigned on Tuesday and is due on Friday. In your planner, you can write down the due date as Thursday instead. You may still put off your homework assignment until the last minute...but in this case, the “last minute” is a day before the assignment’s real due date . This little hack can trick your procrastination-addicted brain into planning ahead! 

If you feel like Kevin Hart in this meme, then our tips for doing homework when you're busy are for you. 

How to Do Homework When You’re too Busy

If you’re aiming to go to a top-tier college , you’re going to have a full plate. Because college admissions is getting more competitive, it’s important that you’re maintaining your grades , studying hard for your standardized tests , and participating in extracurriculars so your application stands out. A packed schedule can get even more hectic once you add family obligations or a part-time job to the mix. 

If you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once, you’re not alone. Recent research has found that stress—and more severe stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression— are a major problem for high school students . In fact, one study from the American Psychological Association found that during the school year, students’ stress levels are higher than those of the adults around them. 

For students, homework is a major contributor to their overall stress levels . Many high schoolers have multiple hours of homework every night , and figuring out how to fit it into an already-packed schedule can seem impossible. 

3 Tips for Fitting Homework Into Your Busy Schedule

While it might feel like you have literally no time left in your schedule, there are still ways to make sure you’re able to get your homework done and meet your other commitments. Here are our expert homework tips for even the busiest of students. 

#1: Make a Prioritized To-Do List 

You probably already have a to-do list to keep yourself on track. The next step is to prioritize the items on your to-do list so you can see what items need your attention right away. 

Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each day, sit down and make a list of all the items you need to get done before you go to bed. This includes your homework, but it should also take into account any practices, chores, events, or job shifts you may have. Once you get everything listed out, it’s time to prioritize them using the labels A, B, and C. Here’s what those labels mean:

• A Tasks : tasks that have to get done—like showing up at work or turning in an assignment—get an A. 
• B Tasks : these are tasks that you would like to get done by the end of the day but aren’t as time sensitive. For example, studying for a test you have next week could be a B-level task. It’s still important, but it doesn’t have to be done right away.
• C Tasks: these are tasks that aren’t very important and/or have no real consequences if you don’t get them done immediately. For instance, if you’re hoping to clean out your closet but it’s not an assigned chore from your parents, you could label that to-do item with a C.

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you visualize which items need your immediate attention, and which items you can leave for later. A prioritized to-do list ensures that you’re spending your time efficiently and effectively, which helps you make room in your schedule for homework. So even though you might really want to start making decorations for Homecoming (a B task), you’ll know that finishing your reading log (an A task) is more important. 

#2: Use a Planner With Time Labels

Your planner is probably packed with notes, events, and assignments already. (And if you’re not using a planner, it’s time to start!) But planners can do more for you than just remind you when an assignment is due. If you’re using a planner with time labels, it can help you visualize how you need to spend your day.

A planner with time labels breaks your day down into chunks, and you assign tasks to each chunk of time. For example, you can make a note of your class schedule with assignments, block out time to study, and make sure you know when you need to be at practice. Once you know which tasks take priority, you can add them to any empty spaces in your day. 

Planning out how you spend your time not only helps you use it wisely, it can help you feel less overwhelmed, too . We’re big fans of planners that include a task list ( like this one ) or have room for notes ( like this one ). 

#3: Set Reminders on Your Phone 

If you need a little extra nudge to make sure you’re getting your homework done on time, it’s a good idea to set some reminders on your phone. You don’t need a fancy app, either. You can use your alarm app to have it go off at specific times throughout the day to remind you to do your homework. This works especially well if you have a set homework time scheduled. So if you’ve decided you’re doing homework at 6:00 pm, you can set an alarm to remind you to bust out your books and get to work. 

If you use your phone as your planner, you may have the option to add alerts, emails, or notifications to scheduled events . Many calendar apps, including the one that comes with your phone, have built-in reminders that you can customize to meet your needs. So if you block off time to do your homework from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, you can set a reminder that will pop up on your phone when it’s time to get started. 

This dog isn't judging your lack of motivation...but your teacher might. Keep reading for tips to help you motivate yourself to do your homework.

How to Do Homework When You’re Unmotivated 

At first glance, it may seem like procrastination and being unmotivated are the same thing. After all, both of these issues usually result in you putting off your homework until the very last minute. 

But there’s one key difference: many procrastinators are working, they’re just prioritizing work differently. They know they’re going to start their homework...they’re just going to do it later. 

Conversely, people who are unmotivated to do homework just can’t find the willpower to tackle their assignments. Procrastinators know they’ll at least attempt the homework at the last minute, whereas people who are unmotivated struggle with convincing themselves to do it at a ll. For procrastinators, the stress comes from the inevitable time crunch. For unmotivated people, the stress comes from trying to convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do in the first place. 

Here are some common reasons students are unmotivated in doing homework : 

• Assignments are too easy, too hard, or seemingly pointless 
• Students aren’t interested in (or passionate about) the subject matter
• Students are intimidated by the work and/or feels like they don’t understand the assignment 
• Homework isn’t fun, and students would rather spend their time on things that they enjoy 

To sum it up: people who lack motivation to do their homework are more likely to not do it at all, or to spend more time worrying about doing their homework than...well, actually doing it.

3 Tips for How to Get Motivated to Do Homework

The key to getting homework done when you’re unmotivated is to figure out what does motivate you, then apply those things to homework. It sounds tricky...but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Here are our three expert tips for motivating yourself to do your homework. 

#1: Use Incremental Incentives

When you’re not motivated, it’s important to give yourself small rewards to stay focused on finishing the task at hand. The trick is to keep the incentives small and to reward yourself often. For example, maybe you’re reading a good book in your free time. For every ten minutes you spend on your homework, you get to read five pages of your book. Like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’re choosing a reward that works for you! 

So why does this technique work? Using small rewards more often allows you to experience small wins for getting your work done. Every time you make it to one of your tiny reward points, you get to celebrate your success, which gives your brain a boost of dopamine . Dopamine helps you stay motivated and also creates a feeling of satisfaction when you complete your homework !  

#2: Form a Homework Group 

If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it’s okay to turn to others for support. Creating a homework group can help with this. Bring together a group of your friends or classmates, and pick one time a week where you meet and work on homework together. You don’t have to be in the same class, or even taking the same subjects— the goal is to encourage one another to start (and finish!) your assignments. 

Another added benefit of a homework group is that you can help one another if you’re struggling to understand the material covered in your classes. This is especially helpful if your lack of motivation comes from being intimidated by your assignments. Asking your friends for help may feel less scary than talking to your teacher...and once you get a handle on the material, your homework may become less frightening, too. 

#3: Change Up Your Environment 

If you find that you’re totally unmotivated, it may help if you find a new place to do your homework. For example, if you’ve been struggling to get your homework done at home, try spending an extra hour in the library after school instead. The change of scenery can limit your distractions and give you the energy you need to get your work done. 

If you’re stuck doing homework at home, you can still use this tip. For instance, maybe you’ve always done your homework sitting on your bed. Try relocating somewhere else, like your kitchen table, for a few weeks. You may find that setting up a new “homework spot” in your house gives you a motivational lift and helps you get your work done. 

Social media can be a huge problem when it comes to doing homework. We have advice for helping you unplug and regain focus.

How to Do Homework When You’re Easily Distracted

We live in an always-on world, and there are tons of things clamoring for our attention. From friends and family to pop culture and social media, it seems like there’s always something (or someone!) distracting us from the things we need to do.

The 24/7 world we live in has affected our ability to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time. Research has shown that over the past decade, an average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds . And when we do lose focus, i t takes people a long time to get back on task . One study found that it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work once we’ve been distracte d. No wonder it can take hours to get your homework done! 

3 Tips to Improve Your Focus

If you have a hard time focusing when you’re doing your homework, it’s a good idea to try and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are three expert tips for blocking out the noise so you can focus on getting your homework done. 

#1: Create a Distraction-Free Environment

Pick a place where you’ll do your homework every day, and make it as distraction-free as possible. Try to find a location where there won’t be tons of noise, and limit your access to screens while you’re doing your homework. Put together a focus-oriented playlist (or choose one on your favorite streaming service), and put your headphones on while you work. 

You may find that other people, like your friends and family, are your biggest distraction. If that’s the case, try setting up some homework boundaries. Let them know when you’ll be working on homework every day, and ask them if they’ll help you keep a quiet environment. They’ll be happy to lend a hand! 

#2: Limit Your Access to Technology 

We know, we know...this tip isn’t fun, but it does work. For homework that doesn’t require a computer, like handouts or worksheets, it’s best to put all your technology away . Turn off your television, put your phone and laptop in your backpack, and silence notifications on any wearable tech you may be sporting. If you listen to music while you work, that’s fine...but make sure you have a playlist set up so you’re not shuffling through songs once you get started on your homework. 

If your homework requires your laptop or tablet, it can be harder to limit your access to distractions. But it’s not impossible! T here are apps you can download that will block certain websites while you’re working so that you’re not tempted to scroll through Twitter or check your Facebook feed. Silence notifications and text messages on your computer, and don’t open your email account unless you absolutely have to. And if you don’t need access to the internet to complete your assignments, turn off your WiFi. Cutting out the online chatter is a great way to make sure you’re getting your homework done. 

#3: Set a Timer (the Pomodoro Technique)

Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique ? It’s a productivity hack that uses a timer to help you focus!

Here’s how it works: first, set a timer for 25 minutes. This is going to be your work time. During this 25 minutes, all you can do is work on whatever homework assignment you have in front of you. No email, no text messaging, no phone calls—just homework. When that timer goes off, you get to take a 5 minute break. Every time you go through one of these cycles, it’s called a “pomodoro.” For every four pomodoros you complete, you can take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

The pomodoro technique works through a combination of boundary setting and rewards. First, it gives you a finite amount of time to focus, so you know that you only have to work really hard for 25 minutes. Once you’ve done that, you’re rewarded with a short break where you can do whatever you want. Additionally, tracking how many pomodoros you complete can help you see how long you’re really working on your homework. (Once you start using our focus tips, you may find it doesn’t take as long as you thought!)

Two Bonus Tips for How to Do Homework Fast

Even if you’re doing everything right, there will be times when you just need to get your homework done as fast as possible. (Why do teachers always have projects due in the same week? The world may never know.)

The problem with speeding through homework is that it’s easy to make mistakes. While turning in an assignment is always better than not submitting anything at all, you want to make sure that you’re not compromising quality for speed. Simply put, the goal is to get your homework done quickly and still make a good grade on the assignment! 

Here are our two bonus tips for getting a decent grade on your homework assignments , even when you’re in a time crunch. 

#1: Do the Easy Parts First 

This is especially true if you’re working on a handout with multiple questions. Before you start working on the assignment, read through all the questions and problems. As you do, make a mark beside the questions you think are “easy” to answer . 

Once you’ve finished going through the whole assignment, you can answer these questions first. Getting the easy questions out of the way as quickly as possible lets you spend more time on the trickier portions of your homework, which will maximize your assignment grade. 

(Quick note: this is also a good strategy to use on timed assignments and tests, like the SAT and the ACT !) 

#2: Pay Attention in Class 

Homework gets a lot easier when you’re actively learning the material. Teachers aren’t giving you homework because they’re mean or trying to ruin your weekend... it’s because they want you to really understand the course material. Homework is designed to reinforce what you’re already learning in class so you’ll be ready to tackle harder concepts later.

When you pay attention in class, ask questions, and take good notes, you’re absorbing the information you’ll need to succeed on your homework assignments. (You’re stuck in class anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!) Not only will paying attention in class make your homework less confusing, it will also help it go much faster, too.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to improve your productivity beyond homework, a good place to begin is with time management. After all, we only have so much time in a day...so it’s important to get the most out of it! To get you started, check out this list of the 12 best time management techniques that you can start using today.

You may have read this article because homework struggles have been affecting your GPA. Now that you’re on the path to homework success, it’s time to start being proactive about raising your grades. This article teaches you everything you need to know about raising your GPA so you can

Now you know how to get motivated to do homework...but what about your study habits? Studying is just as critical to getting good grades, and ultimately getting into a good college . We can teach you how to study bette r in high school. (We’ve also got tons of resources to help you study for your ACT and SAT exams , too!)

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Trending Now

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

ACT vs. SAT: Which Test Should You Take?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Get Your Free

Find Your Target SAT Score

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

How to Get a Perfect SAT Score, by an Expert Full Scorer

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading and Writing

How to Improve Your Low SAT Score

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading and Writing

Find Your Target ACT Score

Complete Official Free ACT Practice Tests

How to Get a Perfect ACT Score, by a 36 Full Scorer

Get a 36 on ACT English

Get a 36 on ACT Math

Get a 36 on ACT Reading

Get a 36 on ACT Science

How to Improve Your Low ACT Score

Get a 24 on ACT English

Get a 24 on ACT Math

Get a 24 on ACT Reading

Get a 24 on ACT Science

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

6 ways to establish a productive homework routine

Assistant Professor of College Learning Strategies and Instruction, Syracuse University

Disclosure statement

Janine L. Nieroda-Madden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

View all partners

Homework. Whether you’re a fifth-grader or a freshman in college, the mere thought of homework can be overwhelming. And actually doing homework can be quite difficult. But homework doesn’t have to be something a student dreads.

As a former high school English teacher and researcher who specializes in what it takes to make it through college – and a co-author of a forthcoming revised edition of a book about academic success – I’ve studied homework since 2010. Here are six ways I believe homework can be made more manageable and valuable, whether you’re in elementary school, high school or graduate school.

1. Set priorities

Establish a list of priorities based on the class syllabus or assignment list. This can be helpful for tackling difficult tasks, creating motivation and activating your sense of control and independence when it comes to learning. The priority list helps maintain goals and gives you a sense satisfaction to cross things off the list as they are completed.

2. Tackle difficult tasks first

Start with your most difficult assignments first in order to make the most of your energy level and to focus at the beginning of a work session. You can attend to the easier or less time-consuming assignments at the end of a work session.

3. Break tasks down to smaller steps

You may not know how to start a major task, which could trigger procrastination or feelings of defeat. To guard against this, break major tasks into three or four smaller steps. Within one homework session, you can feel a greater sense of accomplishment by completing each small step toward the larger whole. In some cases, you might be able to spread these tasks over the course of a week.

4. Create evidence of learning

You will get more out of the time you spend reading, reviewing notes or otherwise “studying” if you create something in the process. For example, creating flash cards, a graphic organizer, chart, or notes with bullet points can help you become an active learner rather than a passive one. Organize the tools you create with the homework assignment by date and topic so that you can review those items to prepare for quizzes, tests or projects.

5. Build a network of support

If certain homework problems could not be solved and you’re stuck in a rut, figure out what’s confusing you and write or record your thoughts. Jot questions down and be as specific as possible in order to seek out additional support from teachers or tutors. The more you can identify sources of confusion, the more you can proactively reach out to your support network – teachers, tutors and others – in order to get additional help.

6. Revisit goals and set new ones

At the start of each homework session, establish goals for completion of your tasks or assignments. Revisit the goals at the end of the session and acknowledge a sense of completion. This goal-setting process builds confidence over time and helps you realize their potential even when faced with difficulties. A productive homework routine will help you realize that learning is an ongoing journey. The journey may be difficult but getting organized will make it as stress-free as possible.

[ Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter . ]

• US higher education
• Good grades
• K-12 education

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Project Manager – Contraceptive Development

Editorial Internship

Integrated Management of Invasive Pampas Grass for Enhanced Land Rehabilitation

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Forums Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• Happiness Hub
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Study Skills
• Homework Skills

11 Ways to Deal With Homework Overload

Last Updated: August 17, 2024 Fact Checked

Making a Plan

Staying motivated, starting good homework habits, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Jennifer Kaifesh . Jennifer Kaifesh is the Founder of Great Expectations College Prep, a tutoring and counseling service based in Southern California. Jennifer has over 15 years of experience managing and facilitating academic tutoring and standardized test prep as it relates to the college application process. She takes a personal approach to her tutoring, and focuses on working with students to find their specific mix of pursuits that they both enjoy and excel at. She is a graduate of Northwestern University. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 257,570 times.

A pile of homework can seem daunting, but it’s doable if you make a plan. Make a list of everything you need to do, and work your way through, starting with the most difficult assignments. Focus on your homework and tune out distractions, and you’ll get through things more efficiently. Giving yourself breaks and other rewards will help you stay motivated along the way. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you get stuck! Hang in there, and you’ll knock the homework out before you know it.

Things You Should Know

• Create a checklist of everything you have to do, making sure to include deadlines and which assignments are a top priority.
• Take a 15-minute break for every 2 hours of studying. This can give your mind a break and help you feel more focused.
• Make a schedule of when you plan on doing your homework and try to stick to it. This way, you won’t feel too overwhelmed as the assignments roll in.

• Make a plan to go through your work bit by bit, saving the easiest tasks for last.

• Put phones and any other distractions away. If you have to do your homework on a computer, avoid checking your email or social media while you are trying to work.
• Consider letting your family (or at least your parents) know where and when you plan to do homework, so they'll know to be considerate and only interrupt if necessary.

• If you have the option to do your homework in a study hall, library, or other place where there might be tutors, go for it. That way, there will be help around if you need it. You'll also likely wind up with more free time if you can get work done in school.

• To take a break, get up and move away from your workspace. Walk around a bit, and get a drink or snack.
• Moving around will recharge you mentally, physically, and spiritually, so you’re ready to tackle the next part of your homework.

• For instance, you might write “I need to do this chemistry homework because I want a good average in the class. That will raise my GPA and help me stay eligible for the basketball team and get my diploma.”
• Your goals might also look something like “I’m going to write this history paper because I want to get better as a writer. Knowing how to write well and make a good argument will help me when I’m trying to enter law school, and then down the road when I hope to become a successful attorney.”

• Try doing your homework as soon as possible after it is assigned. Say you have one set of classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and another on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Do the Monday homework on Monday, instead of putting it off until Tuesday.
• That way, the class will still be fresh in your mind, making the homework easier.
• This also gives you time to ask for help if there’s something you don’t understand.

• If you want to keep everyone accountable, write a pact for everyone in your study group to sign, like “I agree to spend 2 hours on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with my study group. I will use that time just for working, and won’t give in to distractions or playing around.”
• Once everyone’s gotten through the homework, there’s no problem with hanging out.

• Most teachers are willing to listen if you’re trying and legitimately have trouble keeping up. They might even adjust the homework assignments to make them more manageable.

Reader Videos

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.understood.org/en/articles/homework-strategies
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html
• ↑ https://kidshelpline.com.au/kids/tips/dealing-with-homework
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/focused.html
• ↑ http://www.aiuniv.edu/blog/august-2014/tips-for-fighting-homework-fatigue
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/homework.html
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/study-partners/

About This Article

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Daniella Dunbar

Oct 28, 2016

Did this article help you?

Dec 2, 2023

Anamika Gupta

Oct 16, 2020

Mar 8, 2016

Jorien Yolantha

May 8, 2018

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Develop the tech skills you need for work and life

• About Katie
• Application Essays
• The Journal

How to prioritize homework assignments: 5 steps

Katie Azevedo October 18, 2021 executive function , good habits , homework , productivity , time management

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

Knowing how to prioritize homework is one of the keys to not feeling overwhelmed and falling behind in school.

There are some basic steps to prioritizing homework, which I explain below. But first, let’s get clear on the definition of prioritization.

Prioritization Definition : ranking tasks in order of importance and/or urgency for the purpose of determining which items to give primary attention to.

The goal with prioritizing homework assignments is to figure out which assignments to do first, on days when there’s limited time to begin with. Of course, the expectation is to complete all assignments eventually – but sometimes it really is impossible to complete everything within the time we have available. ( Are you doing too much? )

If you have fallen behind in your homework assignments and feel overwhelmed with getting it all done, the following homework prioritization tips can help you climb out of the hole.

Once you’re in the clear, though, it’s critical that you improve your time management skills so that you don’t end up in the same situation again. At the bottom of this post, I list my top time management resources to get you started.

How to prioritize homework assignments in 5 steps

1. find clarity.

You can’t prioritize what you don’t know. Here’s how to get clarity:

a. Get absolutely clear about everything you need to do. Gather all the information from your various sources (Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, emails, classroom whiteboards, assignment notebook , syllabus, teacher, classmates, etc.).

b. Write all of the assignments down on a piece of paper and include the due date of each assignment. Don’t worry about organizing the list right now – just write things down.

2. Sort assignments by due date.

a. Organize your list by putting assignments in order of the earliest due date (at the top) to the furthest due date (at the bottom of the list).

b. Put all overdue assignments in another list on the same sheet of paper.

c. Highlight or star all the assignments due the earliest (most likely tomorrow)

3. Start with the assignments with the earliest due date.

You should start with the assignments due first, which you highlighted in step 2. If you don’t know whether to start with the easy ones or the hard ones, read this .

The reason you should start with the assignments with the earliest due date is so that they don’t become late assignments; we have to stop the bleeding at the source. Also, if you “can’t find time” to work on these assignments, read this .

4. Move on to late assignments.

After you’ve completed all the assignments that are due today or tomorrow, move over to your list of late assignments, which you created in part b of step 2. 

a. Start with the assignment worth the most points. Late is late at this point, so we should prioritize this list by IMPORTANCE instead of DUE DATE.

b. Chip away at this list, one or two assignments at a time, until you’ve completed all the assignments, even if it takes you a few days. Try your hardest not to add any items to this list.

5. Chip away at assignments with further-out due dates.

I suggest alternating step 4 and step 5. In other words, go back and forth between completing late assignments (1-2 at a time) and moving forward on upcoming assignments. Focus on the ones that have the most weight, are the most complex, and will take the longest. This includes assignments like essays and projects.

Final notes on how to prioritize homework assignments

Here’s a quick summary of the 5 steps above:

• Figure out exactly what you have to do, and make a list of all your assignments.
• Organize the list by due date, and make a separate list on the same paper of late assignments.
• First, complete all your assignments that are due today or tomorrow.
• Next, move on to completing late assignments and making progress on forthcoming (not due yet) assignments. Alternate between these two lists until you’re done.

Of course, to ensure that you’re not in a situation like this again, tighten up your time management skills with the following resources:

• How to batch assignments
• How to use the Pomodoro Technique
• How to handle multiple projects at once
• How to plan time to study: 3 tips

Subscribe to ReportCard Newsletter!

Get your FREE download of 25 School Habits and Hacks when you sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring awesome school tricks and tips

I will never give away, trade or sell your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

Explore Related Topics:

• Share this story

Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

Latest from Bostonia

From bu hockey fan to entrepreneur to filmmaker, sports broadcaster and com alum tyler murray heads to the nba, three bu alums—alex cooper, howard stern, bill whitaker—land interviews kamala harris, celebrate alumni weekend 2024 with these six community events, podcast looks at a forgotten chapter of the civil rights struggle, two bu alums take on same roles in leopoldstadt, huntington theatre company’s latest production, this sha alum handles fenway park’s celebrity artists, bu alum chompon boonnak runs mahaniyom, one of greater boston’s hottest thai restaurants, champion of indie films, china scholar merle goldman dies, cfa alum jonathan knight is head of games for the new york times, is our democracy at risk americans think so. bu experts talk about why—and the way forward, a commitment to early childhood education, reading list: alum bonnie hammer publishes 15 lies women are told at work —plus fiction, poetry, and short stories, one good deed: jason hurdich (cas’97) is uniting the deaf community, one cup at a time, space force general b. chance saltzman is a bu alum, using glamour for good: alum’s nonprofit organization brings clothes and beauty products to those in need, gallery: shea justice (cfa’93), oscar-nominated actor hong chau (com’01) stars in new action-comedy the instigators, alum’s new book recounts the battle for inclusion in boy scouts.

• Skip to Nav
• Skip to Main
• Skip to Footer

• Saved Articles
• Newsletters

How to Create Effective Homework

Please try again

Based on a recent spate of articles on homework, it’s clear that the homework wars -- how much? how often? -- are still topic of big interest to both parents and teachers. Some teachers hate to give homework; others see it as a vital necessity. But according to some research presented by Annie Murphy Paul, the question isn’t how much, but whether the homework teachers do give actually advances learning.

“A recent study, published in the Economics of Education Review,” Paul wrote in “How Can We Make Homework Worthwhile?” , “reports that homework in science, English and history has ‘little to no impact’ on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.” Paul goes on to describe specific practices, like spaced repetition (in which information is presented and repeated spaced out over time), retrieval practice (testing or quizzing not for assessment, but to reinforce material learned), and cognitive disfluency (“desirable difficulties” used to make learning stick) -- all memory/retrieval techniques that may help homework move beyond busy work and advance real learning.

But to get those elements to work, said Fires in the Mind author and speaker Kathleen Cushman, students must be motivated to do their homework in the first place. One example Cushman gave was creating a project so interesting and involved, students naturally wanted to keep working on it after the bell rang. She pointed to a chapter in the book where she describes a particular motivation for some high school students she interviewed, under the heading “Homework We Actually Want to Do”:

“Christina and Nicholas both remembered a global studies unit on the French Revolution in which students acted out a courtroom trial of the king and queen. The project brought even routine homework assignments to life, they said.

“I was the queen. So of course I wanted to do my homework all the time, so I could know the facts of what happened and what didn’t happen, know what I wanted to say when someone tried to say I did this or that thing. I could say, ‘Oh no, I didn’t!’ - because I’d read my homework,” said Christina.

Christina was using a form of retrieval practice -- but because it was so much fun to be the queen, she only knew she wanted to stay in character. The queen had to study the information to get it right.

Another way teachers can take a good, hard look at homework practices, said Cushman, is to ask themselves a few vital questions: “Does this homework ask each student to practice something that the student hasn’t yet mastered? Does the student clearly see its purpose? When students are asked to repeat or rehearse something, does it require them to focus? Or can they do it without really paying attention?” If the homework meets these criteria, she said, then it falls into the desirable realm of “deliberate practice .”

Dan Bisaccio, former high school science teacher and now Director of Science Education at Brown University, said that after years of experience giving homework to high school students, he now “preaches” to his future teachers: “Homework should be practice and extensions of what happens in class and should not be ‘new learning,’” he said. “That is, students [shouldn’t be] having to teach themselves new content or skills.”

He said he agreed with Cushman that motivation is key, and tried to design homework that kept students interested. “Teachers need to clue into what motivates their students, giving them something that they really want to complete, and complete well.” One assignment Bisaccio used, called an “Experience Map,” asked students to create a map of their experiences after a field study or other important project - a technique employing both retrieval practice and the somewhat trickier interleaving, a “desirable difficulty” in which problems of different types are presented in one assignment, making students think harder to come up with solutions and answers.

“We ‘map’ mentally and physically each day. It helps to keep us orientated through our frenzied sun-up to sun-down daily experiences,” reads the assignment. Directions are to draw a field experience map, including -- with regard to the class -- where students have been, what they have done, new challenges, and insights. Special suggestions for drawing include “a place of danger, a favorite place, a place of power, a place with a secret.” Students are also called upon to map the places where they learned the most, where they were challenged the most, and where the funniest experience happened.

In addition, Bisaccio asked students to write what had challenged them most as a learner, what had stretched their limits most -- meant to be reflections just for students themselves, and asked to be kept on the back of the map. “What they wrote on the back was not shared with others,” he said. Once the assignment was completed, maps were posted to form a class atlas of what they had learned.

All the examples included here, however, are examples of homework in a traditional classroom. What about homework in a flipped classroom , where the lectures, usually videos, are the homework? A recent New York Times article on flipped classrooms may provide insight into flipping homework on its head, too: it quoted high school senior Luwayne Harris, saying, “Whenever I had a problem on the homework, I couldn’t do anything about it at home. Now if I have a problem with a video, I can just rewind and watch it over and over again.”

• Life Planning
• Find a Coach
• Become a Coach

Coaching Upgrade: 6 Essentials to Foster Trust with Clients

BONUSODE | DON MILLER: The Business of Helping People Win

The Full Focus Planner™

Get Started

Certification

• About Full Focus
• What's Your  LifeScore ?

Quick Links

• Full Focus Planner
• Mind Your Mindset

Productivity

Why You Should Never Start With Your Most Difficult Task

(And What You Should Do Instead)

Years ago, I heard a motivational speaker encourage his audience to “eat that frog.” The line has a long history . And it makes sense: Stop procrastinating and just do the thing you fear. Once you do that, everything else is easy.

While that may be helpful in overcoming procrastination, it’s exactly backwards for big goals and projects. Instead, you should tackle your easiest task first.

Start with the Easiest Task First

When I wrote Living Forward with my friend Daniel Harkavy, we spent two days together talking through the content of the book. We determined that the book should consist of ten chapters.

Because I had written several books before, I volunteered to write the first draft of the manuscript. When I sat down to actually start writing, I did what I always do when writing a book-length manuscript: I started with the easiest chapter first.

Once I completed that, I moved to the next easiest chapter, then the next, and the next. After twenty-nine days, I had completed nine chapters. The only chapter left was the big, hairy one I had dreaded at the beginning of the project.

Initially, I was afraid to write it. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could. But by the time I had finished nine chapters, I was confident I could. That chapter was the only thing standing between me and finishing the book. I literally wrote it in one day.

Embrace the Comfort Zone

In my course, 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever , I teach people that you can set your goals in one of three zones:

• The Comfort Zone
• The Discomfort Zone
• The Delusional Zone

I then argue you should set them in the Discomfort Zone, where you experience some level of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Why? Because these are the goals that prove to be the most compelling over time. This is also where all the really good stuff happens.

I then explain that you should avoid the Comfort Zone as well as the Delusional Zone. Both are counter productive when it comes to setting goals.

However, the way to tackle a goal that is in the Discomfort Zone—one that makes you feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt—is to start with a task that is in the Comfort Zone. Why?

3 Reasons to Go from Easy to Hard

There are at least three reasons I find it helpful to top-load my task list with easy items.

• Motion. The first step on any project is usually the toughest. But when you start with the easy steps, you lower the threshold for taking action. This is how you trick your brain into starting.
• Emotion. Getting some quick-wins boosts your mood. According to researchers Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats ,

[F]inishing immediate, mundane tasks actually improves your ability to tackle tougher, important things. Your brain releases dopamine when you achieve goals. And since dopamine improves attention, memory, and motivation, even achieving a small goal can result in a positive feedback loop that makes you more motivated to work harder going forward.

That’s exactly what happens for me. My excitement level actually goes up as I work.

• Momentum. Getting started and feeling good about your progress means it’s easy to build momentum—just like I did with my manuscript. Gino and Staats say checking items off your list frees up mental and emotional energy to focus on other projects. You might also find the tough items get easier as you go .

The opposite is also true. When you start with the hardest projects first, you can drain your mental and emotional energy. Now you’re lagging—and still looking a handful of small jobs on your to-do list. Now the easy looks hard. It’s a momentum killer.

This is how I personally attack any big project or goal. I start with a task so small and so easy I can’t fail. I then use that as a foundation to progressively take on more difficult tasks.

I even approach my daily to-do list this way. I start with the easiest task first, then move to the next easiest, and then finish with the hardest.

You have to be careful you are not using this as a way to procrastinate (which is the real message behind the eat-that-frog advice). But assuming you aren’t, it’s a great way to defeat fear, and achieve some really big outcomes.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we use and believe will add value to our readers. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

More In Productivity

Ted Lasso Was Wrong: Don’t Be a Goldfish

Accidental soccer coach Ted Lasso is famous for telling his players to “be a goldfish.” Why? Because a goldfish has[...]

Rescue Your Schedule From “Busy”

You’re doing too much. All of us (if we have good, honest friends or mentors) have probably heard these words at some[...]

Step Back to Press On

Last week, we explored how Q4 pushes people to accumulate tasks, activities, and obligations. The driver behind that[...]

5 Habits for Better Work-From-Home Balance

The global landscape has undeniably shifted, with more of us working from home than ever before. While this offers[...]

Become a Full Focus Insider

Subscribe to the Full Focus newsletter for the latest insights, strategies, and tools from our CEO to keep you winning at work and succeeding at life!

Sign Up Now

This site uses various technologies, as described in our Privacy Policy, for personalization, measuring website use/performance, and targeted advertising, which may include storing and sharing information about your site visit with third parties. By continuing to use this website you consent to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

Enter your email to unlock an extra $25 off an sat or act program, by submitting my email address. i certify that i am 13 years of age or older, agree to recieve marketing email messages from the princeton review, and agree to terms of use., 8 easy ways to finish your homework faster.

How many times have you found yourself still staring at your textbook around midnight (or later!) even when you started your homework hours earlier? Those lost hours could be explained by Parkinson’s Law, which states, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” In other words, if you give yourself all night to memorize those geometry formulas for your quiz tomorrow, you’ll inevitably find that a 30 minute task has somehow filled your entire evening.

We know that you have more homework than ever. But even with lots and lots to do, a few tweaks to your study routine could help you spend less time getting more accomplished. Here are 8 steps to make Parkinson’s Law work to your advantage:

1. Make a list

This should be a list of everything that has to be done that evening. And we mean, everything—from re-reading notes from this morning’s history class to quizzing yourself on Spanish vocabulary.

2. Estimate the time needed for each item on your list

You can be a little ruthless here. However long you think a task will take, try shaving off 5 or 10 minutes. But, be realistic. You won’t magically become a speed reader.

Free SAT Practice Tests & Events

Evaluate and improve your SAT score.

3. Gather all your gear

Collect EVERYTHING you will need for the homework you are working on (like your laptop for writing assignments and pencils for problem sets). Getting up for supplies takes you off course and makes it that much harder to get back to your homework.

The constant blings and beeps from your devices can make it impossible to focus on what you are working on. Switch off or silence your phones and tablets, or leave them in another room until it’s time to take a tech break.

Read More: How to Calculate Your GPA

5. Time yourself

Noting how much time something actually takes will help you estimate better and plan your next study session.

6. Stay on task

If you’re fact checking online, it can be so easy to surf on over to a completely unrelated site. A better strategy is to note what information you need to find online, and do it all at once at the end of the study session.

7. Take plenty of breaks

Most of us need a break between subjects or to break up long stretches of studying. Active breaks are a great way to keep your energy up. Tech breaks can be an awesome way to combat the fear of missing out that might strike while you are buried in your work, but they also tend to stretch much longer than originally intended. Stick to a break schedule of 10 minutes or so.

8. Reward yourself! 

Finish early? If you had allocated 30 minutes for reading a biology chapter and it only took 20, you can apply those extra 10 minutes to a short break—or just move on to your next task. If you stay on track, you might breeze through your work quickly enough to catch up on some Netflix.

Our best piece of advice? Keep at it. The more you use this system, the easier it will become. You’ll be surprised by how much time you can shave off homework just by focusing and committing to a distraction-free study plan.

Stuck on homework?

Try an online tutoring session with one of our experts, and get homework help in 40+ subjects.

Try a Free Session

Explore Colleges For You

Connect with our featured colleges to find schools that both match your interests and are looking for students like you.

Career Quiz

Take our short quiz to learn which is the right career for you.

Get Started on Athletic Scholarships & Recruiting!

Join athletes who were discovered, recruited & often received scholarships after connecting with NCSA's 42,000 strong network of coaches.

Best 390 Colleges

168,000 students rate everything from their professors to their campus social scene.

SAT Prep Courses

1400+ course, act prep courses, free sat practice test & events,  1-800-2review, free digital sat prep try our self-paced plus program - for free, get a 14 day trial.

Enrollment Advisor

1-800-2REVIEW (800-273-8439) ext. 1

1-877-LEARN-30

Mon-Fri 9AM-10PM ET

Sat-Sun 9AM-8PM ET

Student Support

1-800-2REVIEW (800-273-8439) ext. 2

Mon-Fri 9AM-9PM ET

Sat-Sun 8:30AM-5PM ET

Partnerships

• Teach or Tutor for Us

College Readiness

International

Advertising

Affiliate/Other

• Enrollment Terms & Conditions
• Accessibility
• Cigna Medical Transparency in Coverage

Register Book

Local Offices: Mon-Fri 9AM-6PM

• SAT Subject Tests

Academic Subjects

• Social Studies

Find the Right College

• College Rankings
• College Advice
• Applying to College
• Financial Aid

School & District Partnerships

• Professional Development
• Advice Articles
• Private Tutoring
• Mobile Apps
• International Offices
• Work for Us
• Affiliate Program
• Partner with Us
• Advertise with Us
• International Partnerships
• Our Guarantees
• Accessibility – Canada

Privacy Policy | CA Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information | Your Opt-Out Rights | Terms of Use | Site Map

©2024 TPR Education IP Holdings, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University

TPR Education, LLC (doing business as “The Princeton Review”) is controlled by Primavera Holdings Limited, a firm owned by Chinese nationals with a principal place of business in Hong Kong, China.

Options For Youth

Public Charter Schools

Homework Hacks: 8 Tips to Get It Done Faster

Homework is no fun, especially if you’ve got a full schedule. You only have a little bit of time and a little bit of energy. And it takes so long to get through it.

Not anymore. We’ve got some helpful homework hacks for you that will make doing your homework faster and less painful.

1. Plan Your Homework and Make a List

When you start your homework, you’ll probably jump right into the first thing on your mind or the first thing you pull out of your backpack, then work your way through the rest of your assignments. There’s a better way.

Figure out how much time you have to do homework, then list out all the different tasks that you have to do. Estimate how long it will take to complete each assignment to see if you need to allow yourself more time. Be realistic. Once your list is complete you can work straight through instead of stopping frequently to figure out what to do next. It will also be extremely gratifying to cross things off after each assignment you finish!

2. Get Out All the Books and Supplies You Need

While you’re working, you discover you need a calculator, you need a certain book, you need a new pencil, you ran out of paper… the list can go on.

Since you’ve now identified all your assignments, figure out everything you need to get each item done and bring it to your workspace so it’s there when you need it.

3. Find a Quiet Place to Work Without Distractions

Speaking of workspace, you probably prefer doing your homework in front of the TV, but that can actually be the biggest distraction of all. Sitting in front of the TV is probably slowing you down, making homework time seem much longer that it actually is.

Find a place that’s quiet, with as few distractions and clutter possible. Remember, the faster you get it done, the faster you can get back to fully enjoying Netflix.

4. Turn Off Your Phone

We know this is probably the last thing you want to hear. How can you live without your phone? But for a couple hours, its totally worth it. Every time you get a notification and check your phone, it breaks your focus. It then takes more brain power to get back on track to what you were working on.

5. Listen to Classical Music While Working

We know what you’re thinking… Classical music? Seriously?

However, classical music is great for background audio. There aren’t any lyrics or beats to distract your focus. And research has shown that students who listen to classical music score higher on tests than students who listen to other genres of music. So find some good classical playlist on Spotify, then celebrate with Queen Bey when you’re done.

6. Eat Snacks and Drink Water

At the end of a long day, you may be mentally and physically tired. If you go straight into homework it may take you a long time to finish and it won’t be your best work.

Having some light healthy snacks and drinking plenty of water helps revitalize your brain and body. Avoid soda, energy drinks, or sugary snacks that will only make you crash before you’re done.

7. Take Short Breaks in Between Homework Tasks

If you have a lot to do, you may feel the pressure to just work straight through hours and hours of homework. But this will likely end up slowing you down, prolonging the entire session.

Do your work in short sprints. Go hard at a task, then take a quick break to stretch and walk around. It’ll re-energize your mind and body to keep going. For starters, try working for 25 minutes, then taking a 5-minute break.

8. Reward Yourself After You’re Finished

Homework isn’t always fun. But negativity can slow you down.

Our brains work off of reward systems. If you give yourself a reward when finishing your homework, it makes it a lot easier to start your homework the next time and you’ll get through it faster. Rewards could be being able to watch a show, eat ice cream, play a game, or going out and doing something fun.

Now that you’ve got all these tips, go get your homework done faster than ever before. It may be hard at first, but keep using these tips and it’ll get easier as you go.

Featured Image: Piotr Marcinski/Shutterstock

• Graduation Ceremonies
• Student Weblinks
• Teacher Weblinks
• Transcript Request

Follow Us On Social Media

• Advisory Board
• Child Find Process
• Request for Proposals
• OFY-Acton (WIOA)
• OFY-Duarte (WIOA)
• OFY-San Bernardino
• OFY-San Gabriel
• OFY-San Juan
• OFY-Victor Valley
• A-G Courses
• Online Program
• College Prep
• July Intersession
• Student Handbooks
• ELD Master Plan
• Math Placement

What’s the Right Amount of Homework?

Decades of research show that homework has some benefits, especially for students in middle and high school—but there are risks to assigning too much.

Your content has been saved!

Many teachers and parents believe that homework helps students build study skills and review concepts learned in class. Others see homework as disruptive and unnecessary, leading to burnout and turning kids off to school. Decades of research show that the issue is more nuanced and complex than most people think: Homework is beneficial, but only to a degree. Students in high school gain the most, while younger kids benefit much less.

The National PTA and the National Education Association support the “ 10-minute homework guideline ”—a nightly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But many teachers and parents are quick to point out that what matters is the quality of the homework assigned and how well it meets students’ needs, not the amount of time spent on it.

The guideline doesn’t account for students who may need to spend more—or less—time on assignments. In class, teachers can make adjustments to support struggling students, but at home, an assignment that takes one student 30 minutes to complete may take another twice as much time—often for reasons beyond their control. And homework can widen the achievement gap, putting students from low-income households and students with learning disabilities at a disadvantage.

However, the 10-minute guideline is useful in setting a limit: When kids spend too much time on homework, there are real consequences to consider.

Small Benefits for Elementary Students

As young children begin school, the focus should be on cultivating a love of learning, and assigning too much homework can undermine that goal. And young students often don’t have the study skills to benefit fully from homework, so it may be a poor use of time (Cooper, 1989 ; Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). A more effective activity may be nightly reading, especially if parents are involved. The benefits of reading are clear: If students aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade, they’re less likely to succeed academically and graduate from high school (Fiester, 2013 ).

For second-grade teacher Jacqueline Fiorentino, the minor benefits of homework did not outweigh the potential drawback of turning young children against school at an early age, so she experimented with dropping mandatory homework. “Something surprising happened: They started doing more work at home,” Fiorentino writes . “This inspiring group of 8-year-olds used their newfound free time to explore subjects and topics of interest to them.” She encouraged her students to read at home and offered optional homework to extend classroom lessons and help them review material.

Moderate Benefits for Middle School Students

As students mature and develop the study skills necessary to delve deeply into a topic—and to retain what they learn—they also benefit more from homework. Nightly assignments can help prepare them for scholarly work, and research shows that homework can have moderate benefits for middle school students (Cooper et al., 2006 ). Recent research also shows that online math homework, which can be designed to adapt to students’ levels of understanding, can significantly boost test scores (Roschelle et al., 2016 ).

There are risks to assigning too much, however: A 2015 study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90 to 100 minutes of daily homework, their math and science test scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015 ). Crossing that upper limit can drain student motivation and focus. The researchers recommend that “homework should present a certain level of challenge or difficulty, without being so challenging that it discourages effort.” Teachers should avoid low-effort, repetitive assignments, and assign homework “with the aim of instilling work habits and promoting autonomous, self-directed learning.”

In other words, it’s the quality of homework that matters, not the quantity. Brian Sztabnik, a veteran middle and high school English teacher, suggests that teachers take a step back and ask themselves these five questions :

• How long will it take to complete?
• Have all learners been considered?
• Will an assignment encourage future success?
• Will an assignment place material in a context the classroom cannot?
• Does an assignment offer support when a teacher is not there?

More Benefits for High School Students, but Risks as Well

By the time they reach high school, students should be well on their way to becoming independent learners, so homework does provide a boost to learning at this age, as long as it isn’t overwhelming (Cooper et al., 2006 ; Marzano & Pickering, 2007 ). When students spend too much time on homework—more than two hours each night—it takes up valuable time to rest and spend time with family and friends. A 2013 study found that high school students can experience serious mental and physical health problems, from higher stress levels to sleep deprivation, when assigned too much homework (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013 ).

Homework in high school should always relate to the lesson and be doable without any assistance, and feedback should be clear and explicit.

Teachers should also keep in mind that not all students have equal opportunities to finish their homework at home, so incomplete homework may not be a true reflection of their learning—it may be more a result of issues they face outside of school. They may be hindered by issues such as lack of a quiet space at home, resources such as a computer or broadband connectivity, or parental support (OECD, 2014 ). In such cases, giving low homework scores may be unfair.

Since the quantities of time discussed here are totals, teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects, that’s three hours—far above a reasonable amount even for a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias sees this as a common mistake: Individual teachers create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic of back-to-school night and the first parent-teacher conferences of the school year.

Parents Play a Key Role

Homework can be a powerful tool to help parents become more involved in their child’s learning (Walker et al., 2004 ). It can provide insights into a child’s strengths and interests, and can also encourage conversations about a child’s life at school. If a parent has positive attitudes toward homework, their children are more likely to share those same values, promoting academic success.

But it’s also possible for parents to be overbearing, putting too much emphasis on test scores or grades, which can be disruptive for children (Madjar, Shklar, & Moshe, 2015 ). Parents should avoid being overly intrusive or controlling—students report feeling less motivated to learn when they don’t have enough space and autonomy to do their homework (Orkin, May, & Wolf, 2017 ; Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008 ; Silinskas & Kikas, 2017 ). So while homework can encourage parents to be more involved with their kids, it’s important to not make it a source of conflict.

Hard or Easy: Which Task Should You Tackle First?

By Ryan Douglas

We’ve been told the same productivity advice for years – work on the hardest tasks first to achieve your goals. While this approach is fine for some people, others need a small warm-up before tackling their biggest challenges. Today’s article looks at the unexpected benefits of starting small and being productive.  

Smaller Commitments Improve Your Odds

Let’s face it – taking on a big task sometimes feels overwhelming. Not just physically, but mentally as well. Thinking about the entirety of a big decision can make your heart race and mind begin drifting into the unknown.

“Where do I start?”

“How do I know if I’m doing it right?”

“What if I screw up?!”

These types of thoughts are debilitating and serve no purpose in reaching your goal. Just the opposite. Feelings of self-doubt are often enough to make you want to quit before you’ve even begun.

A perfect illustration of how the biggest challenge in getting started – is getting started.

Yet, once you begin, finishing a task is like most any other goal in life. Once in motion, the finish line gets clearer. Momentum becomes the sustaining force that keeps you moving forward . And the only way to get it is by taking action.

So how do we overcome the anxiety of walking that first step? Simple – start small .

Choose an item that you can knock out quickly (with little effort) to gain some traction. An easy win to make progress and help you get “in the groove.” If you were exercising, this would be your warm-up. Getting your muscles loose and prepared for the heavy lifting that’s yet to come.

Keeping in mind that if you hurt yourself working out, your gains come to a halt. Bruising your confidence means the same thing in regard to productivity.

Traditional advice says to “go big” and take on the largest challenge of the day first.  Yet, most of us have limited willpower and tend to get overwhelmed quickly. Which means we stop whatever we’re doing and feel worse afterward (because nothing was accomplished).

Starting small lowers the threshold for taking action and requires less effort to get moving . Which makes whatever you’re trying to accomplish more likely to happen.

And the trend of small wins is continuing to gain acceptance. Even productivity expert and best-selling author Michael Hyatt says easier tasks should come first . Citing many of the same reasons discussed in this article.

That’s what makes apps like Elisi so valuable. Our weekly based to-do list helps you achieve higher productivity while still maintaining balance. The intuitive interface allows you to track important practices (like meditation, exercise, and water intake), along with project information and personal notes.

Best of all, tasks are displayed in a way that encourages you to take action (rather than punishing you for not). Small steps add up – and Elisi helps you take more of them.

However, if you want to go big sometimes that’s okay too. There’s no rule saying you have to choose one or the other. Both strategies are useful depending on your confidence, energy level, and current state of mind.

Worst case scenario, if you go big and things don’t work out, you can always scale back and try again. Just don’t butt your head into the wall every time or you’ll run out of motivation.

Easier Tasks Produce Emotional Wins

Starting small isn’t just good for productivity, it nourishes your body and mind as well. Completing a handful of minor tasks gives you the emotional “lift” necessary to take on bigger challenges. A compounding effect which continues to feed itself over time.

And let’s not forget the incredible benefits to your brain also.

Research has shown that accomplishing a goal releases dopamine . A powerful neurotransmitter that controls feelings of pleasure, reward, and emotional satisfaction. All of which are key elements of productivity.  

Increased dopamine improves focus, memory power, and elevates your mood .   By improving focus, you’re able to concentrate longer and harder on the task at hand. Strengthening memory power helps you retain what you’ve learned and recall information faster when you need it. Elevating your mood provides the motivation to get started and the drive needed to keep going.

Working on tough projects first can produce the opposite – generating stress while leaving you physically and mentally drained. Causing you to lose motivation and have nothing left for other tasks.

Studies have shown that chronic stress suppresses dopamine production and causes an array of harmful side effects. Including anxiety, depression, and lack of energy.

With dopamine, feeling better about completing tasks isn’t just in your head – it’s an actual physical response. A compelling argument for why small wins can lead to big victories.

Increased Confidence Equals Higher Productivity

One of the best parts of knocking smaller to-do items off your list first is how it increases overall confidence. With each task completed, you prove to yourself (and others) that making progress and achieving your goals is possible.

Which, in turn, leads to taking on bigger challenges that may have previously seemed impossible. Confidence becomes the lubrication that keeps the wheels of productivity moving. Helping you to become bolder and more efficient in everything that you do.

Projects that were once scary don’t seem so intimidating afterward.

With larger projects, the opposite is often true. Stalling or failing to make progress erodes confidence and makes you shy away from future challenges . You doubt your ability to produce results and pull back because of it.

And if you’ve come up short too many times in a row, you might give up entirely.

When it comes to productivity, there’s no right or wrong way to go about it. As long as you are continually moving toward your goals. While some choose to tackle the entire mountain first, others feel more comfortable starting out with a short hike.

And that’s okay.   

Because getting a series of small wins can be just as powerful as overcoming a major obstacle. As long as you keep your eyes on the prize, you can increase focus, motivation, and confidence as you work toward your goals.

All without the stress of taking on too much at once, or the shame of not finishing it afterward. Now that’s something to get excited about.

Looking for a more human way to accomplish your goals?

Sign up for your FREE Elisi account and get started today.

Elisi Studio