I decided to focus on my bad habit of procrastinating my work in my most technical/most time consuming classes. This trend was extreme last quarter, when I would start my CS 230: Deep Learning homework the night before it was due at 9:30 am the next morning. This resulted in me being quite tired the next day and having significant burn out. I made the following connection circles diagram and realized that there were a few behaviors that could influence me positively and negatively:
To walk you through the diagram, being afraid to start the pset contributed to me staying up late which contributed to me procrastinating. A behavior that could decrease the tendency of being afraid to start was going to office hours. Additionally, this connection circles diagram helped me discover that setting up time to work on the pset with friends increased my accountability levels, which could deter me from starting late and procrastinating. Additionally, working on homework first thing in the morning was also a behavior that could decrease procrastinating in general.
I also considered how this behavior was effecting the rest of my life in this reinforcing feedback loop diagram: 
Procrastinating leads to staying up late, which leads to feeling burnt out, which leads to me being afraid to start the homework, which once again leads to me procrastinating.
The connection circles activity really helped me identify the proxy behaviors that could help me reduce my procrastination. The feedback loop diagram provided incentive for me to want to alter this procrastination behavior because it really showed me how much my life is impacted by this behavior.
Thus, over the weekend while I worked on the first assignment for my current biggest class, CS 224N, I tracked my time and behaviors:
On Sunday, I prioritized working on the pset first thing in the “morning” (highlighted in Blue) instead of working on what I normally work on in the morning, which is work for my CAship for CS 109. This gave me less anxiety throughout the day because I wasn’t dreading starting the pset. On Sunday, I also prioritized setting up time to work on the pset with a friend to increase my accountability levels. I coordinated with my roommate to do part 2, which was more conceptual than coding, together. This behavior is once again highlighted in Green on the Monday side of the spreadsheet. I finished the pset more than 24 hours before it was due and avoided a lot of stress. Importantly too, I do not feel as burnt out as I did last quarter and am ready to start the next pset early and not procrastinate it!
One thing I would do differently next time is keep track of how I feel while I am working on the pset alone versus with friends. In my memory, I feel like I have less anxiety when I don’t immediately “get it” when I am working with friends, but I would like to more quantitatively collect data on that.
