I study computer science and any time I sit down to code, I just browse or watch Youtube. Anything but do the work. Days and even months have gone by like this where I haven't done even an hour of learning. Its tough because in order to code I need to be in front of a screen but my brain refuses to study and just looks for that dopamine hit. My grades have suffered and I feel like a constant failure.
To clarify this is not an effect of the pandemic but has been happening for the past few years.
Woah, I think you just described my school years. Even when I was performing "well" academically , I did have moments where I procrastinated a lot in school like submitting hw/reports/projects close to the deadline or sometimes even after, not being able to study for exams in subjects I found “boring”.
This hit the nail on the head. And it got so much worse in college as I got bogged down in other life stuff. Thus an entire semester would go by before I opened the textbook for any subject and that too just to pass the exams.