A bad habit I really want to break is leaving everything until the last minute. I'm a third-year law student in Istanbul, and whether it's an essay, a birthday present or packing for a trip, I always seem to do it in a panic the night before.
It started back in secondary school. I was quite clever, so I could get away with studying the night before a test and still pass. My parents were busy with their restaurant, so nobody really checked when I did my homework. Over time, it became my normal way of working.
It affects me in a lot of ways. The most obvious one is stress. During exam season I'm often up until three or four in the morning, drinking strong tea and feeling sick. My work also suffers; last term I submitted an essay with an entire section missing because I simply ran out of time to check it. It's affected my friendships too. My flatmate Elif gets frustrated when I ask her for help at midnight.
I want to stop because I know the habit won't work in my future career. Lawyers deal with strict deadlines and clients' real problems, and you can't prepare a court case in one night. I also feel that I'm never doing my best work, only my fastest. Recently I've started breaking big tasks into small pieces and putting each one in my calendar, and I study at the library with Elif in the afternoons. It's only been a few weeks, but my last assignment was finished two days early, which honestly felt amazing.