Making the best use of your time
As a current university freshman, I find that most of my time is actually spent on procrastinating. Putting things that I need to do to a later time. And one day, these things that I needed to complete snowballed to the last minute and caused me much stress and panic.
And that’s when I realised that it is time to kick procrastination’s ass once and for all. So I’ve done some research (reading articles, etc) on procrastination and I want to share with all of you what I’ve gathered.
- What is procrastination?
- Why we procrastinate?
- How do we fight procrastination?
So what is procrastination?
Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing a task or a set of tasks. For example, you need to hand in an assignment tomorrow morning and it is now 5 pm. You kind of feel reluctant to do it and tell yourself “I’ll do it later”. Now, it is 6 am, the deadline is in an hour and you are rushing to complete the assignment.
This is procrastination. The simple act of doing things later.
So why do we procrastinate?
We all kind of know that procrastination is bad but why do we still do it? Why do we keep telling ourselves “I’ll do it later”?
I recently watched this Ted Talk by Tim Urban on youtube which really summed this question perfectly. Here’s the link to the video.
In this talk, he describes our minds to have a steering wheel that is used to make decisions, a rational decision-maker, an instant gratification monkey, and a panic monster. The monkey loves to do things that are easy and fun while the rational decision-maker does things that are logical and productive. And in most of us procrastinators, the monkey is at the wheel making the decisions. Because of that, we spend our time procrastinating, watching Netflix, scrolling through Tik Tok, and anything besides what we are supposed to be doing. When our deadline approaches, the panic monster wakes up scaring the monkey allowing the rational decision-maker to take over the wheel.
And this is a very very very good example of humans in general. As humans, we tend to prefer things that are easy and fun. We choose to procrastinate because we dread doing boring and hard things such as doing assignments and reading a book. There are times where we can have fun but it shouldn’t take up most of our time!
However, we also have to understand that our time is limited. We have to make the best use of our time and strive to make a lasting impact in this world! So start now.
So how do we fight procrastination? How can we fend off the monkey?
Many say that the cure is to start doing. But it is not that simple. You have to start and keep doing it!
You can do this by employing the “15-minute rule” by Caroline Buchanon. It is a very simple technique but it is very very effective.
There are 3 simple steps to it.
- Pick or choose a task that you have been procrastinating. It could be an assignment, cooking, or anything.
- Set a timer for 15 minutes.
- Work on the task for that 15 minutes.
Simple right? Before you know it, you’ve already gone into this zone of extreme focus and might not even realize the 15 minutes had ended.
Conclusion
To everyone who is a major procrastinator like me, I hope this story gave you a better insight into what and why we procrastinate and I hope that the “15-minute rule” helps you win the war against the monkey! :)
