Repeated Mistakes

“Until you value yourself, you will not value your time.
Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” ~ M. Scott Peck

Since a long time I have been trying to change a bad habit of procrastination but haven’t been successful.

Since the start of this week I knew I had two things due today, a assignment for my Antarctica paper and a test for my Pacific Archaeology paper. Yesterday I had the whole day free to concentrate on these two important tasks but I didn’t do it, I was too busy walking around the city, meeting my sister for lunch and just putting my mind elsewhere. At night I thought I should at least do the readings for my Archaeology test but then I thought “ohh, its just a small test. It should only take me an hour to study for it in the morning so why now?”. Same with my assignment, I thought the same exact thing and kept it hanging.

Now as the day has arrived I still haven’t worked on any of the tasks and am here writing my first blog post. It seems there is one thing that is causing this problem and another which is increasing it.

I will start with the first one which is Over Confidence. This is the first thing that causes this problem. It is not just for students but for everyone, sometimes when we get praised or find something that looks easy, we become over confident about it thinking that its too easy and leave it for later as its not seemingly “that important right now”. And when the day comes we become stressed out and procrastinate as it looks like too much of a workload.

An easy and simple cure to this is being Proactive! Simply put, just start doing your important tasks early and work on them everyday for a few minutes. This is much easier on your mind and this way you don’t have to do all of it at once with time constraints on top.

The second thing which makes this problem worse is Withdrawal. Most people who have left their tasks hanging till the end will actually finish them even if it isn’t their best work while others who are just too overwhelmed by looking at the tasks will withdraw from doing them. This is a problem that not everyone has but for the people who do, it is a source of depression. Withdrawal is when there so much stuff to do that you just don’t want to do it anymore and withdraw from it. I am a prime example of this, I have an assignment and a test later on today but instead I am writing this post. I feel like I just don’t want to do them anymore, even if it did affect my overall marks and my grades. This is a serious problem for people who have Withdrawal Symptoms as it can ruin your future if you don’t fix it.

On the bright side there is also an easy way to not let the Withdrawal Symptoms get to you and excitingly its the same solution as I mentioned before! Be proactive! You wont even have to worry about withdrawal as you will already be eliminating the first cause of the problem. Its like a 2 in 1 deal, so start focussing on your main priorities, even if it is for a few minutes a day, and see how relieved you will feel when its due date comes.

…as for me, I am going to start with studying for my test now and after that work on my assignment.

Have a simple life!