Defeat Procrastination Now

So many of us know the feeling. You receive a message from a friend that asks you a tricky question. You have enough time and your fingers are right on the keyboard, but you’re just not in the mood. So you keep on doing other things, still thinking about the message that needs a response,until you realize that it’s too rude to procrastinate any more. If you’ve had this same experience, congratulations, you’re officially in the league of procrastinators!

The blogger Tim Urban made a speech about it on TED. In his theory, there’s a rational decision-maker in everyone’s brain. And there’s an instant gratification monkey in the procrastinators’ brains. Obviously the problem lies with the monkey. Whenever the rational decision-maker decides to be productive, the monkey—who cares only about easy fun—jumps out.

The monkey and the rational decision-maker

The monkey is everywhere. He takes control of our heads and steals our time. The vicious monkey beats the rational decision-maker when you first decide to write an email but end up watching a video of a panda rolling down a hill, or spend a whole evening reading messages on your phone in the library. The monkey smirks when you try to finish writing your book report desperately before the deadline. In the struggle of what you should do and what you want, the monkey always wins.

Let’s talk about why we procrastinate. Do we not want to finish the work perfectly, with time to spare, following a well-organized plan? Yes we all do. But preparing for a presentation, writing an article, reading a book or cleaning the room thoroughly seem like a lot of work. The idea of doing it is terrifying. Wait, there is still time. It can wait till tomorrow. Besides, there are so many distractions: new messages on the phone, birds singing outside, dust on the desk... Ah, let’s do something else and forget about it!

The doom loop of procrastination

Many university students are suffering from the doom loop of procrastination. The sudden unbridled freedom may seem like heaven, but is also a disaster for many people. Most GDUFSers must understand the feeling of staying up late to prepare for the next day’s presentation while we actually have around a week to prepare. But are we doomed to all-nighters powered by guilt and panic? Procrastination is eating away at our productivity, and with the new term coming, we should by all means kick this GPA killer away.

Unfortunately, procrastination won’t disappear easily. The websites online will tell you to make more achievable goals, design your future actions and make the rewards of taking action more immediate...... There are tons of theories and researches telling you how to get rid of it. But the core is not to make excuses and do the first thing on your listright away. Things always seem scary when you don’t start doing them, but when you actually get started, you’ll find that they’re not as hard as you think. Don’t wait for the right moods but find them yourself.

Defeating procrastination is winning back the control over your life from the monkey and the best time to start is NOW.