Last time I admitted to my horrible tendency to procrastinate. One of the interesting things about procrastinators is that they tend to hate the fact that they procrastinate even if they’ve accepted that procrastination is “just how they work.” Having been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember you needn’t worry, I’m one of you. I always did my best work the night before. Still, after I’d handed in my work or given that presentation I always knew that I could have done better. A little tweak here, a little more preparation there. While procrastination drove my success, it always limited my quality.
Solution #1: Have Less Time. Part of my procrastination was solved by graduate school. The added work load of reading, writing, and (for me) performing (among other duties that came with employment) decreased the amount of available time I had to procrastinate with. This left me having to start, in some ways, earlier than I normally would. Still, there was time wasted. Still, I procrastinated. Still, I wasn’t as efficient as I wanted to be. Still, my best work was done in the few days (or weeks) before due dates and when after I’d turned them in I recognized easy fixes that wouldn’t have been there if I’d just started earlier.
While having less time didn’t actually make me stop procrastinating entirely it did teach me a valuable lesson: there is more than enough time for most things. I learned that you can, in fact, take a five-minute lunch break (and read while eating). I learned that the ten minute down-time between classes can be used for more than just transporting myself from one classroom to another. So while I didn’t stop procrastinating entirely I learned about the value of time. I can only relate it to sports (something I haven’t played seriously since maybe high school). In basketball a lot of things can happen in five seconds. The same is true for life. Do something.