Procrastination and Me

The mind of a procrastinator is an amazing place to be, it rationalizes the most irrational things like delaying a very lengthy assignment of Literature till the last day, assuming that somehow, you’ll be able to complete it. That you’ll be possessed by some super-human power at the last minute and you’ll do an amazing job than the rest of these losers who’re working now. And then that last day comes and you’re too panicked and stressed to actually write anything, so you end up copy-pasting the whole thing from internet. Knowing full well that you can analyze that assigned poem better than this. You promise yourself to never do it again, but then the next thing comes, and you find yourself caught in this monotonous and demonic circle of procrastination again. This is actually my life in a nutshell. I’ll have plenty of time to do a thing in the best possible way, but I get so creative in finding a way to avoid it till the last possible moment and that last confrontation scares me like nothing else. Suddenly, reality becomes more horrifying than an actual horror movie but those are the consequences of my own actions.

When I came across this part of online course, I thought to myself that it’s probably not gonna work for a habitual criminal like me but let’s give it a try. The first thing I did was prepping my meal that I’ve been planning on doing, since last week and I never got around to do that. One of my goals/SMART goals is to start eating healthy and loose weight. I have to marinate chicken for that purpose and my mother had defrosted it twice, but I was too lazy or busy with other things. This morning, after having breakfast, I put a timer on my phone for 25 minutes and started peeling garlic and ginger. I diced all the ingredients including chilies and made little cuts on the chicken and mixed everything. Then I added yogurt and other necessary spices. And it was done. The task I’ve avoiding for so long took less than 25 minutes.

Using this technique wasn’t difficult for me at all, I focused all my attention on it and in between I got this urge to see who has texted me on whatsapp and what’s that notification from facebook is saying but I suppressed my desire and continued working on my task at hand. It took me much less time than my normal way of doing things.

After this successful attempt, I decided to take it up a notch and again put on a time to clean my room which was, as usual cluttered and disoriented. Again, I was able to complete the task within the time, without any distractions and solely focusing on a single project at one time.

Now, I’m writing my blog by putting a timer and I have written a significant part of it in the first quadrant and took a break of 3 minutes, in which I checked the texts from my university whatsapp group, and I came back to completing this blog. This technique is really useful for an extremely demotivated person like myself because it gives a sense of an immediate deadline looming above my head and I can hear the sound of the clock ticking in my head and I transform into a really productive person for the span of 25 minutes. It’s working like a miracle for me.