Glimmerick

I often have a problem with procrastination.  I frequently put off a large portion of a project/job/report/etc until the last minute. Let me explain, in terms of a paper.  When I need to write a paper, I know that I should work on it as soon as possible, so that I don’t leave it all until the very end. So I jot down an idea here, write a few sentences there, and I think that I am making progress. As soon as I know it, the paper is due at tomorrow, and I have a paragraph or two.  All along, I had deceived myself that I was actually working on it, while actually I had just been picking at it, accomplishing nothing.  The blog Organize IT writes a nice post about the idea of dealing with something as it comes up, and I recommend you read it.  While reading his book, Sam Walton has a great answer to looming projects that I find really helpful to keep in mind:

Let’s be out front. Let’s do it right. Let’s get it done now and get on with it.

This is such a simple answer, but is also hard for people to implement it in terms of current projects.  Common excuses are:

1. It’s too big, I don’t know where to start
2. It’s not really that much work, I’ll start on it later
3. I’m too busy now, I’ll have more time later
4. I don’t understand it

The problem with thinking like this is that it gives our brains an excuse to put it off until later.  If a project seems too large to complete, and it is just overwhelming, try breaking it down into mini-projects that are easier to accomplish in a shorter time frame. Instead of viewing a large paper as one large project, taking 8hours, view it as 4 smaller projects taking only 2 hours.  By breaking it down in this fashion, the project is not as ominous, and more conquerable.

One of my biggest problems is that I fail to look ahead, and make a plan.  I’ll just jump in on the paper and start writing, and do outlines or research as I need it.  By having four different chunks to work with, choosing items to work on in each chunk is easier.  Maybe in the first 2 hour chunk, I’ll make an outline and do research.  The second 2 hour chunk I may decide to write the thesis paragraph and the body topic sentences.  It can vary what you do in these chunks, as long as you use the time wisely, plan ahead, and have mini goals to accomplish, so you feel like you have actually accomplished something.  Of course if you have a system that works for you, by all means keep it! That is great.

Here are 10 tips that I use when trying to be productive, they work for me, you can do what you want with them:

1. Turn off my cell phone- Those texts can be very distracting, and it takes awhile to get back to concentrating when I get interrupted.
2. Go someplace quiet- I like to go to the library, where my buddies cannot tempt me to go play video games or Ultimate Frisbee.
3. Don’t sit in a comfortable chair- Sure, don’t sit on a chair of needles, but I find that sitting in a very comfortable chair soon puts me to sleep.
4. Have some snacks- Being hungry renders me useless when trying to study.
5. Get some sweet tunes- This is a highly debated topic, some people can’t study at all with music, some people can study better with it. I know that I study much better with music!
6. Study in smaller chunks- I know during finals this is a fantastical idea, but otherwise, I try not to study for more than 2-3 hours at once; after that I retain less of the information.
7. NO computers- This is my Achilles heal. I get very distracted by computers and they send my productivity down the tubes. Facebook, Digg, Gmail, Blogs, Baseball box scores- you name it, I get distracted by them.
8. Highlight/ Make bullet points- I find that when reading books, I need to make bullet points or highlight important lines. This helps me in reviewing–> I know just to read over the important items, not the filler content.
9. Be organized!- This is something that I struggle with, but when I do it properly, I can tell that I save a lot of time.  Some classes I have all my papers thrown into one folder, and they is NO order.  Other classes I have tabbed folders, and when I can find the papers that I need quickly it saves time, and it adds up.
10. Don’t multitask- No that is not a typo, and yes I told you that to be productive, you should not multitask.  A featured article in TIME quotes “When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially” ~Dr. David Meyer  Some may claim that they can do just fine multitasking, and some can, but I am admit defeat, I have realized that it rarely helps me.

I find that I like to take tips from many different sources, and create my own “productivity guide.”  These tips are certainly not the end all be all, but they have drastically helped me in life.

Currently reviewing: Sam Walton: Made In America

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Auto/biographies, Books, Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.