Procrastination. I’m literally staring at a blank
white screen on Microsoft Word, trying to think of what to write in order to
describe this. But even as I stare at it, I have that all-too-familiar tugging
sensation, trying to pull me away from being productive and attempting to throw
me back into the depths of distraction – Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Vine, and
countless other websites that I “waste” my time on. But why do I feel such a
strong urge to kick my studies, and more importantly, I guess, my goals to the
metaphorical curb like garbage?
Everyone
gets the urge to procrastinate. Hell, you might as well say that everyone procrastinates, in one form or
another. Be it leaving a huge term paper to the night before, or leaving a
writing passage you’ve started weeks ago to collect dust, or in some extreme
cases, even not bothering to get up off your ass to go get groceries, even if
you risk starving. Yeah, that’s a pretty extreme case, but hey, it does happen. Procrastination affects
everyone, but it affects some way more
than others.
Okay, let’s
start this whole thing by trying to “formally” (more or less) define this
monstrosity of a term. Procrastination. Procrastination.
Procrast… Sorry, just got a message on Facebook that I simply had to answer. Now then, if we use our
trusty source the Internet, we find that Merriam-Webster defines procrastination as the following:
pro·cras·ti·nate
verb \prə-ˈkras-tə-ˌnāt, prō-\
: To be slow or late about doing something that
should be done: to delay doing something until a later time because you do not
want to do it, because you are lazy, etc.
The obvious
point here is that we’re slow or late (but not always late) to do or perform a
task. It might not be essential (however it is a lot of the time), but it
should be done. The most important part comes next – “… until a later time
because you do not want to do it, because
you are lazy”. You don’t want to do it, huh? You feel lazy, eh? Don’t want to drag your sorry butt off of your computer
chair to do it? Or if it’s on the computer, don’t feel like closing down
Facebook, Twitter and the like? I know that feeling.
I’m a heavy
procrastinator myself. I like to refer to people like me as “procrastiknights”,
as we are chivalrous beings who, while sworn to defend our goals at all costs,
can never really get up and give a damn. Many of us say that we’re too lazy to
do something, or simply “don’t want to do it”. The underlying problem to these
claims is this – in today’s society, technology has become king. Social media,
crowdsourcing, all of that jazz and fun post-modern lingo, has become of top
importance. While it’s not necessarily
a bad thing, the amount of distractions present for us is pretty substantial.
Now, this
isn’t to say that older generations weren’t distracted – there were other ways
for them as technology wasn’t at the stage that it’s at today. Technology has
simply become the “new thing” for people to use, overuse, and finally
overindulge on. You see so many teenagers today opening up their iPhones (and I
guess Android phones which are on the rise too… yay for competition between
overpriced plastic boxes with sound and video!), snapping a picture and posting
it on Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat (this one’s especially fun as a time-waster),
Instagram and more. Distractions are taking us over!
Alright, I’m
not even going to explain why this ties in to procrastination – it’s pretty
obvious. What, it’s not? Ok then, well here it is in short: let’s say you’re
working on a report for your high school English class (or if you’re an adult
out of school, a report that needs to be submitted to your supervisor for
review). It’s due in a week and a half. You’re happily brainstorming away, when
you notice someone tweeted at you. Oh, how nice of them! You HAVE to reply
back, or else it’s not nice! That conversation continues on for about a half
hour. Once that’s over with, you start to get back to brainstorming. Oh wait,
your iPhone buzzed and you have three new messages on BBM (Blackberry Instant
Messenger for those uninformed)! Again, you have
to respond, because they can see when you have read the messages! Now, a lot of
the time you aren’t 100% focused on just chatting, and are still brainstorming
for your report. However, the quality is suffering, and you’re going to need to
spend extra time hammering out these details. This report’s pretty important,
as you realize. Ten minutes after you begin to work again, one of your close
friends sends you a link to a funny Vine they saw. Here we go, you say to
yourself. You watch the vine, and have a laugh attack! It’s so hilarious that
you have to watch it ten more times, and even then it’s still funny. At this
point, you’re caught in a hilarity loop – you’re laughing so hard that your
mind tells you “I want more funny!”
You gladly comply, and spend the next half an hour watching funny Vines.
Afterwards, it’s too late to even focus on your brainstorming notes, so you go
to sleep, hoping that tomorrow is a better day.
Unfortunately,
this process has been shown to repeat multiple times, so there’s a pretty
decent chance that while you’ve taken the initiative to start early, you might
find yourself using those precious last minutes, the night before it’s due in,
to work on it. You stay up until the wee hours of the morning, but it’s finally
finished – albeit maybe at a lesser quality than you’d like, but its’ done. It’s
a good feeling of accomplishment, which boosts your morale. However, what this
does is it creates a mental note in your head that says “Ok, so that worked! I
can leave a lot of it to the last minute and just stay up really late to finish
it, no problem”. So, your mind convinces you to continue this process for
future projects, which is absolutely
what you’re trying to avoid!
Okay, I
lied. That wasn’t that short. But do you get the point? By getting distracted
by current technologies it’s enabling you to put yourself in unproductive
loops, thereby making throwing your time management skills out the window. Now,
obviously technology isn’t the only
distraction – you might have a girlfriend, or plans with friends, or a job you
work at to make money. These are all contributing factors! Some are avoidable,
some aren’t. Well, in reality all of them are avoidable, but it’s all about how
you manage your time, as well as making sure your planning and scheduling for
everything you do fits with what you want to accomplish and how you want to
live.
I’m not
going to pretend that I’m a master of time management, because I’m not. I won’t
say “never in a million years”, but probably pretty close to that definition.
Like me, many of you have probably scoured libraries and the web, looking for
better ways to manage your time. I can’t count how many YouTube videos on
motivation and time management I’ve watched on my two hands, and I’m still in
this pickle. So, my fellow procrastiknights (is it catching on?), how can we
work towards fixing this problem? How can we crush the Procrastination
Epidemic?
Well, I’ll
tell you something. I just realized it as I wrote the words “Procrastination
Epidemic” on this paper. I went an entire
almost ten minutes without getting distracted while writing this. It’s only
three pages (I’m not a literary wizard, you know!) but it’s a revelation! I
never even checked my phone or Facebook, which is a feat in itself. I
definitely don’t have a reliable statistic, but I’d imagine that the average
person (either with their computer or phone) checks Facebook alone around every
two to three minutes, give or take a little. I’d go as far to say that the
average person uses social media, or their phone, or any other distracting
online or electronic activity around every twenty
to thirty seconds. This might be a completely BS statement, but for me at
least, this statistic is true. Even when I’m working on a written assignment, I
find myself going on Reddit or twitter many times in a minute, even if to just
check for updates. It’s become like an impulse, like my body needs its’
electronic thirst quenched, or something.
Sorry,
drifting a bit off point. Here’s that big revelation I’m talking about: Filling
your time with things that you’re actually interested
in and would be more or less content with doing can help you to get less
distracted. Now, this is probably insanely cliché, and it’s probably so vague
you want to stop reading right now (just kidding… please don’t, or else the
unread words will be sad).
But for
everyone, for everything, there’s a point where doing a task gets so boring, so
routine, or so overbearing that we
resort to distracting ourselves with mediums that give us little bursts of
satisfaction. Like “ooh, I got a like!”, or “A verified account just followed
me on Twitter, ohmygod!” These little bursts are treated in our minds as a sort
of replacement for that large feeling of satisfaction that comes with doing the
work you’re actually supposed to be doing.
It’s not just that feeling when you finish though – as cliché is it gets, it
actually is also about the journey.
If you’re working on a project, and you’re actually getting some enjoyment out
of it (maybe not the laughing kind, but a gratifying feeling of getting
informed or gaining experience), your mind will pick up on this. It will sense
that you’re feeling that sense of satisfaction, even if the project might at
first bore you to tears! These intrinsic rewards or general feelings of
self-appreciation and “psychological gold stars”, as I like to say, help to
motivate you further to achieving what you set out to do. In this case, it’s
doing a project. In someone else’s case, it might be losing 50 pounds. Or in
another, climbing mount Everest! While these objectives are hugely different,
they all have the same underlying principle: The goal might seem monstrous, and
the journey might seem even worse to
have to go through, but if you spin it in a perspective that you can use to
actually get enjoyment out of it, you can push through with insane willingness
you may have never seen yourself have!
Alright,
now at this point you’re maybe thinking to yourself, “Wow, this is pretty
motivational. I want to go conquer my dreams!” But wait, just stop for a
second. I know that this might be very helpful information, but just stop, and think: you might have read or
this exact same information many
times before. Now, you shouldn’t be asking things like “well, what’s different
this time then?” because I’ll tell you that nothing is different this time.
Absolutely NOTHING. I dare say that some of what I’ve written for you is motivational fluff, but there’s a
purpose. Without stuffing, a stuffed animal is just a shell of what it can be.
Right? I think that makes sense. But what I’m saying is that all of this is
very informational, but without a solid action plan, it all goes to the
dumpster. You have to work with yourself to transform what you’ve learned into
concrete steps to success. This is the hardest part, because while your head
may be full of thoughts, like goals, dreams, aspirations and general ideas of how to get there,
putting these thoughts into coherent processes on paper takes time and effort.
Luckily for you, as a Procrastiknight, you can make this your first challenge
against procrastination!
What I want
you to do RIGHT NOW is this: Write down your goals and dreams. Okay, wait a
minute. Wait just one second. Let me
clear this up – when you do this, don’t think.
There’s a little thing in psychology called stream
of consciousness, which is the basic principle that the mind is always
spouting things out, even if you’re not specifically trying to think of it. For
example, if someone came up to you and said, “Quick, say the first five words
that come to your head!” your responses might be completely random: broccoli,
mouse, skyscraper, plant, esophagus! That’s stream of consciousness.
So what I
want you to do now for me is a variation on your stream of consciousness. I
want you to think of two words separately. The first word is goals. Goals can mean anything to you, be
they short-term or long-term, but for these goals I want you to try to be as realistic
as you can. Finish this week’s paper? Good one. Become the first astronaut on
Mars? It’s an okay one, not super realistic but passable. Write all of these down
on a single piece of paper, with the word “Goals” in big letters at the top.
Good! Now then, the second word I want you to think of is dreams. Similar to goals,
dreams are the things that you wish to aspire to. Be elected President or Prime
Minister? Awesome! Be your high school class’ Valedictorian? Fantastic! Write
these down on another sheet, titled “Dreams” in big letters at the top.
I bet you
might notice something. Do your sheets have similar words or sentences? I thought
that they might. For many, goals and dreams are very similar, rather than
unique. Whereas dreams are things many only wish they could fulfill, goals, for
many people, are things that they are willing to put the effort into to
accomplish. If you noticed that your goals
and dreams sheets have similarities,
I would start smiling right about now, because by having your goals and dreams
align, it means that subconsciously (or knowingly) you are willing to put the
effort in to reach your dreams.
This is
HUGELY related to procrastination, because it is a barrier that you must
overcome in your pursuit of your goals and dreams. This barrier will definitely
pop up many times and may feel almost impossible at times to overcome. But it’s
doable every time. You just have to make the work you do enjoyable, relatable,
and exciting so you can kick procrastination right in the butt. You are a Procrastiknight!
With real goals, and amazing dreams and aspirations!
Alright,
cool down time. I’m feeling pretty pumped up right now, don’t know about you!
Let’s quickly recap what you’ve read: Firstly, procrastination sucks. It’s a
pain in the ass. We all get it, and we all struggle with it. I do too, usually
more than others. Technology has become a big part in our distraction. While it
may seem like a mortal enemy, we can use it to our advantage! Like I’ve said,
one of the keys to defeating procrastination is warping your work into
enjoyable, relatable and exciting work that you actually WANT to do. It will
make the entire process that much
easier. You can even incorporate your distractions into your work, to give
procrastination another kick in the butt. Use social media to get personal
insights into the material you’re researching or writing. Get feedback and ask
for tips on how to improve, and see if there are things that people would see a
benefit from being included in your work. While things like texting and SnapChat
might not be useful for your task at hand (if you’re really creative, it could
be somehow!) by using other distractions in your work, you will have much more
interest in fulfilling your objectives and will not even be enticed to text
other people.
As a
general conclusion, I can’t believe that I just wrote this much in forty
minutes. I have class early tomorrow, so I should actually read this again to
get myself away from procrastination.
Anyways, I hope that you found this mess of an experience insightful and that
you can go on and form a concrete, solid action plan that caters to your needs for the future! You are a
Procrastiknight, and you are ready to conquer the world!
… One paper
at a time. It’s a start, anyways!
