More, on procrastination

So I've mentioned procrastination once before. Not that I showed myself to be some sort of professional upon the matter. Expressing my thoughts in a blogging format is... actually rather complex. It's more than just thinking and typing out your thoughts. At least, if you mean to be a proper blogger, it's not. I'm not sure that any bloggers thoughts are as clear and well-read as those they end up posting. If they are, well then, I'm doing something very, very wrong here without knowing it.

Ignoring that-- What can one do to overcome the difficulties of procrastination? Well the first and most important thing to do eerily resembles what you're supposed to do if you have a drinking or drug addiction. Admit to the problem. Hehehe. Once you've gone about admitting the problem to yourself, you have many options, including simply ignoring it. I'm going to ignore that however. One of the more practical steps I've found once I've admitted to my procrastination is to brainstorm. Not that I want a storm over my brain, but it helps jolt my creativity through bad puns. More seriously, thinking about WHAT it is you are procrastinating exactly, WHY you've been doing so, and realistically assessing how you could go about actually completing the thing you're putting off are key. After this comes something that many a teenager and young adult would dread... Setting a schedule.

Why set a schedule when you could instead just start on what it is you've been putting off now? Because, a schedule is an obligation, and one for which you have personally set. When you put off doing something you scheduled yourself to do, it has a much larger, more conscious impact on you than if you were to put it off otherwise, without any end-date in mind for what you had to do. Not just that, but it's incredibly easy to lose track of what it is you needed to do in the daily tedium. Tales abounds of my step-father and the numerous times he's been asked to fix something, only for it to be put off for another month or two until the problem is nearly critical and his complaints about how bad the situation is resound loudly through the house. Such is the result of procrastinating something.

So next time you know you're putting something off, I hope you'll try joining me in my efforts to stop saying 'why do today what can be done tomorrow?' I know I haven't mastered it yet by any measure. But it's that effort that's important. I am Etzel, and this is me signing off. Take care of yourselves.