By Zach Enfinger
I may have a problem, okay I do have a problem. That’s the first step to recovery right? I love to procrastinate. There I said it, in front of all you, while you just sit there procrastinating on something you should be doing.
People love to procrastinate, it’s a weird form of anxiety that cripples us until the very last moments. Then, in an anxiety-fueled burst of physical/mental energy, we turn out work faster than we ever thought we could produce. But the problem with this “lifestyle” lies in that instead of breaking down these assignments and tasks into manageable chunks, we end up doing all the heavy lifting at the end, which causes the work to become only a fraction of what we can actually turn out.
It’s a easy thing to do. I’m a college student, and the beginning of every semester is the same. Your professor hands you a piece of paper with all the due dates for your assignments, and if you’re lucky, even a breakdown with what you need to read and by when. Then what happens? You become overwhelmed by the amount of work and you start playing catch up until the next break for “When you’re going to get everything in caught up.”
I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s okay, I’m just going to give you guys my point of view on procrastination. Maybe, hopefully, some of you guys will identify with my own accounts, thoughts, and actions.
What’s procrastination to me? Well procrastination is when you decide cleaning the apartment, or often times repeatedly checking Reddit is more important than that current project you are working on. Also, when I say “working on” that most likely means that a Microsoft Word page is up with the title… and nothing more.
So what have I done to try to counter this mental annoyance? Websites like Lifehacker.com are handy. Even if most of the time I’m just reading the tips and tricks, then moving on without really trying even half of them, it at least makes you feel as if you are doing something constructive. I’ve also read the productivity/humor book, The Nerdist Way: How to Reach The Next Level (In Real Life) for example.
The website rescuetime.com seems to be one of the most helpful sites I’ve seen for people with time managment problems. The website pretty much acts as your internet mommy and daddy, it tracks how much time you spend on each website you visit. Then it will categorises the websites as “productive” or “unproductive.” It also lays all the data into extremely easy to read charts and graph; it’s a great way to see exactly where your time is going. You can also pay a $72 dollar yearly fee for their solo pro program which would allow you to “turn off” those distracting websites to force you to become productive. At the moment though, I’m just using the free version which still displays all the information, but does not have the “turn off” feature and some other helpful add-ons. One of the first steps in becoming a more productive person is to know how you spend your time, and being able to actually see how you spend it is pretty cool.
Zack was once told that he looks like Peter Parker “before” he got the cool superpowers. This is still one of the best compliments he’s ever gotten. To get in contact with Zack simply follow him on Twitter @ZackEnfinger.
