Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Procrastination


I am a procrastinator. It is a sad fact. I would like to change. I checked out The Procrastinator's Handbook from the library a few weeks ago. I have read the first chapter. I like it. It is interesting but I keep putting off reading the rest of it. I had to renew it.

My friend Marilee keeps trying to convince me that she is a procrastinator too, but she's not really. We are in our second semester of school together and today she had to ask me what time the deadline for submission of an assignment is. A true procrastinator would already know, "11:59 Texas time or 10:59 Utah time".

I am proud to report that I had my most recent assignment in by 3:00 this afternoon until Marilee mentioned there was a 100 word limit on it. I had to edit my 163 word submission after work tonight and had it resubmitted by 10:30. Last semester my average submission time was around 10:54. There was a lot of high stress and panic involved. So I am improving. As soon as I overcome procrastination I will work on becoming a morning person.

4 comments:

Jessica Grosland said...

I tried to tackle one of those problems here at college. I got myself a 4:00am job to become a morning person, because I'd always assumed that morning people were healthier, more productive and generally better people. And, from doing this, I learned a valuable lesson:

If you are not a morning person, you CANNOT become a morning person.

No, really. It's true. Each person has his own circadian rhythm, certain hours during the day when he is most alert and productive and certain hours when his body benefits the most from sleep. While you CAN learn to function in a rhythm that is not natural to you, you cannot THRIVE.

I get up every morning at 3:00am. I get out of bed, go to work, do my schoolwork. To the outside world, I am a morning person.

But what they don't know is that I have the hardest time focusing on my work before eleven o'clock, that it still feels wrong to go to bed before nine, and that when my alarm clock goes off in the morning I almost start to cry because it's morning again.

So, from one night-owl to another, don't feel bad. It's just the way you're built.

Dona said...

Thanks Jess. You articulated my thoughts exactly in your first paragraph. I do feel that I am "bad" because I am a night owl. And you made me feel better about it.

However, I then noticed that you made your very well written comment at 7:50 a.m. which I'm pretty sure I would not have the ability to do. Maybe you are a bit of a morning person after all.

Yet, I am going to cling to the hope that your message has provided me and try not to feel guilty for reading a novel (not a textbook) until 3:00 this morning which is about the time you were getting up.

Robin said...

I love you partly because you are a night owl -- it's part of our sisterhood!

Be who you want to be, not who the world tells you you should be.

Kazzy said...

SO what are you studying? Where?