Experiment: Day One

Published on August 10, 2005 By momijiki In Life Journals

Start: 11:03

Here's a link to the first article I read Link

Words in quotation marks are from the article.

This guy has the same article in lots of different places on the web, Link
so if you see a title about stopping procrastination in 7 steps, best to skip this guy, I think. He has a lot of ideas, but the are TOO general. My philosophy about helping people is that if you're gonna help someone, don't just talk in the big picture. Give them specific tools to use. For example, telling a smoker to "stop smoking" is, of course, what that person has to do. Chances are the smoker already knows this and is rolling eyes at the inane comment. Same for most of this guy.

For ex
"1. You can stop procrastination by getting organized. Being unorganized leads to chaos and feelings of being overwhelmed. Stop procrastination by organizing your life."

Hmmm¡Ä I spend more time getting organized than I do getting stuff done. Not helpful.

"2. Breakdown tasks into manageable units to stop procrastination. Smaller tasks are less overwhelming that large jobs."

Ok, fair enough
"3. Have discipline. Allow your desire for success to overcome your desire to put things off."

Dude, thanks for telling me something I don't know! I think all people desire discipline, but how do you define it? How rigidly disciplined do you have to be? I read that this problem is similar to telling a fat person to stop eating or a smoker to stop smoking. Just do it. Fair enough, but if it were really that easy to turn on the taps, this wouldn¡Çt be a problem. I thought a magic fairy would come and wave her discpline wand and my life would be perfect.

"5. Get someone else¡s help to stop procrastination. Ask someone to hold you accountable for completion of a task you have been procrastinating about."

A good idea, but a dangerous one. That is like asking someone to call you on cheating on a diet. There has to be a lot of trust in that relationship, but also it needs to be done in a way that doesn¡Çt crush the procrastinator or put the other person in the position of being bitchy.

"For example, if you are putting off cleaning the garage ask you wife to question you about when it will be completed several days before the due date."

LMAO¡Ä a recipe for marital bliss if I ever saw one.

Bottom line? Best thing about this article was found in the second website with the links to other pages that gave practical tips on how to get this done.

P.s. Started day with a schedule. Had to revise it constantly because of technical problems with computer, but got all major tasks done and a few of the irritating things that have been hovering. Lots of tasks still hovering, but a good beginning.

finish: 11:13
Just in time!!!

So I found this link more helpful Link

Comments

foreverserenity

on Aug 10, 2005

Enligtening article momijiki! As a procrastinator myself, I'm always looking for new ways not to procrastinate! I find when I use a list it really helps me to focus and doing so (using the list) really works! The unfortunate thing is......sometimes I procrastinate about writing that darn list!

momijiki

on Aug 10, 2005

There is another site that I found that looked pretty good. People write what helped them most recently. I'll see if I can find it.

momijiki

on Aug 10, 2005

The website I was thinking about is "43 Things" Link It's about people writing the 43 things they want to do in their life.

This link will take you right to the one about procrastinating

foreverserenity

on Aug 15, 2005

Thanks for the link. I'm going to check it out. That 43 things sounds really interesting too.

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