The instant gratification monkey

With June already well underway, I thought I'd talk about some thing that I've been having a problem with for a while - procrastination.

Personally, I always seem to procrastinate the most when the stakes are the highest. 20 final paper - lets start the night before! Presentation thats worth 30% of my grade - lets get this done the day of! For all of my academic career, I had been pretty good about getting things done on time, but for some reason I couldn't get myself to work my second semester of junior year. One particular example was studying for my Japanese final. Even though it was the only thing that stood between me and my long-awaited summer, I couldn't bring myself to study for the test till the night before.


Now that school was finally over, I had pushed my woes about my struggle with procrastination to the back of my head until a couple of nights ago. On one of my usual spirals into the depths of Youtube, I stumbled upon this Ted Talk. In it, Tim Urban gives us a witty and insightful talk about his own experience with procrastination and how he understands the difference between a person who procrastinates, and one who doesn't. There were many great moments in this talk, but one of the things that stuck out to me the most was his ending - procrastinating on things without a deadline.

After watching this video, it hit me. I wasn't procrastinating for the sake of not wanting to study - no, it was something deeper than that. I was procrastinating in thinking about the future. By swamping myself with schoolwork, it left me no time to think about whats ahead. Hard as it was to admit, I didn't want to plan for the future because I was afraid nothing would go to plan. Essentially, it was a fear of failure and the unknown that was holding me back from doing anything, and it had camouflaged itself in the form of procrastination. Knowing that any decisions I made now could have repercussions in the future was holding me back from even starting

The first step of solving any problem is admitting there is a problem. Now that I've been able to do so, I know for certain I can conquer this bump in my path as I head into the future. I urge anyone whose been having problems with procrastination to look at themselves and try and understand why you procrastinate. Time is always ticking.