I’ve got to stop this. I keep procrastinating each week, so I end up with a bunch of homework to do on Sunday. Blah. I know perfectly well that I shouldn’t do that because I can’t count on being able to focus on any particular day. I even advised other students with FMS against procrastinating, for that very reason. So why do I end up, every week, racing the clock to get it all done?
Not only is it stupid for me, but it’s also a bad example for the girl. And it adds to my stress, which makes me feel worse. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I know part of it is a perfectionist/OCD thing. I put it off because my brain isn’t focusing marvelously, even though rationally I know that it doesn’t ever do that anymore, and I’m not going to get magically less foggy on Sunday just because I have assignments due.
I fall into doing other things, too, then get obsessed with doing them perfectly and spend hours on what should have been a 15-minute job. For instance, I was just going to add the books I’m reading at the moment to Now Reading yesterday, and instead of stopping there I ended up putting in a bunch of books I want to read, and completing an entry of some series I read in the past, and adding images to some records that were missing them, and…
This, of course, is also when I get stuck on things like, “This desk is too cluttered. I’ve got to put some things away. Where is that piece of paper with the new doctor’s number on it? Oh, I need to call…” Half the things that start whirring through my head as my urgent can’t even be done on the weekends, anyway, like making appointments or checking on my Social Security claim. Making to-do lists helps get some of them out of my head, but I don’t need to be making lists or blogging or anything else. I need to be studying!
I just realized that part of my “save it for Sunday” thing has to do with Sunday being Sam’s podcasting day. If he’s available, I’d rather spend time with him than study. He won’t be available on Sunday, so I know I won’t have anything better to do then. It would be far more functional, though, to be working on next week’s assignments while he’s busy, rather than scurrying to get things finished on time.
It still struggle with procrastination – such as the 46 guest welcome letters I need to proof-read.
I find that a *good* task management system (Getting Things Done, FlyLady, etc.) helps enormously. GTD, in particular, has “contexts”. What I do with contexts involves brain states: hermit, sociable, easy, thought, etc. Add that to a good deadline system, and things get easier. No more hundred little things flying around in my head, they are written down.
My current love is OmniFocus (Mac only). I sit down at the computer, check out my list, change context if necessary, and do something that really needs to get done. The trick is that you must actually review the status of all your projects and goals, about once a week. But that 15-30 minutes saves me 3 hours over the course of the week.
All of the external tricks and memes and other things meant to help you get on track won’t and usually don’t work. The reason is simple. You aren’t having fun in school. If things WERE fun, you’d do them first. But they’re not. They’re a CHORE. And chores are always easy to put off. Because they aren’t fun. And fun ALWAYS comes first. As it should be.
Its tough sometimes to do things exactly when you want them done!