Productivity Stealing Parasite by Alexander

Productivity Stealing Parasite by Alexander - August 2018 Scholarship Essay

As a popular educational podcast host, the topic of today’s podcast would be procrastination. School starting up in a week or so and the biggest challenge most students will begin to face in their educational journey is procrastination and their fight against themselves to remain focused. As a student myself procrastination has been a problem of mine since my middle school years and I’ve broken down my own habits into three questions: Why do I procrastinate? How has the procrastination affected me as a person, as a student and in my educational advancement? How can I prevent procrastination all together? Procrastination is the biggest threat to progress and if it can be avoided altogether then the possibility of growth and improvement are infinite.

Why do we procrastinate? Is it Lack of motivation or lack of focus of the destination? It’s both, without destination there is no motivation. I once heard a story of a man telling a woman to walk in a straight line to a desk across the room they were in. While she was halfway to the desk, the man put a chair in front of her and she didn’t think of it too much, so she broke the line, went around the chair, got back to her line, and got to the desk. Once she got to the desk, the man told her to go anywhere across the room in a straight line, she was confused but decided to just walk straight anywhere. Halfway across the room the man put another chair in front of her and the woman was put to a complete halt and didn’t go around it this time, why did she stop? What’s the difference between the first and second scenario? The difference is that in the first scenario, she focused on her destination and not her journey to her destination. It didn’t matter what obstacle came her way because she would find a way around it. In the second scenario she went through the journey with no destination in mind, she just focused on walking straight and whenever something was put in her way, she was stopped and had nowhere to go because she had no goal to reach. It’s at that hult that we are most vulnerable to procrastination. A destination give us a motive that keeps us in check when unexpected things come our way. The destination is what allows us as students and workers to take another route while still remaining focused.

How has procrastination affected me? Procrastination is a productive-energy sucking leech that crawls into your life just to feed off of your demotivation, tiredness, and boredom. As a person procrastination rids you of your focus, distracts you from your goal, and kills your sense of responsibility. As a student procrastination restricts you from getting work done, causes you to form bad habits, diminishes your adaptability to changes in your schedule and will cause you to fail. Failure is the only positive fruit that comes with procrastination. Nothing really can make you stop and rethink your strategy and daily habits than the feeling of failure. In comparison to success, in failure there’s more opportunity for growth. Once you’ve seen and felt what being at the bottom of loads of work is like and come out on top through perseverance, it strengthens you and teaches you about yourself and how to prevent procrastinating habits from developing. Which leads me to my third and final question.

How to prevent procrastination altogether? Procrastinating being one of my biggest challenges through school, finding a way to stop it was another challenge in itself. With guidance and trial and error, I realize that going through the procrastinating route is not a road worth taking if it can be avoided completely. The first step for preventing procrastination from taking over is having a goal or a destination. To stop from discouraging yourself, have short term goals to keep you motivated and inspired to continue working. The second step is to have ideas and record them because you’ll never know what you want to do if you can’t remember. Step three and four the last and in my opinion the most crucial steps: time manage and plan your day out. I cannot stress this enough, without planning it’s just an idea! If there’s something I’ve learned from the very start it’s that everything sounds great in theory until you try it out and realize you don’t have enough time to do anything. Plan everything from when you wake up to when you go to bed. Take out time for yourself when you can take a break and breathe, go on social media, play games, or do whatever you’re interested in because after all meeting your human needs are important whether its socially or physically but make sure it’s cut after a certain time. Excessive leisure time is a gateway to non-productivity. Plan! Plan! Plan! It is the key to having a successful and productive day. As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”.

Procrastination has been students greatest nemesis but with these strategies, procrastination can be beat once and for all. You control your life not your habits. Procrastination is the biggest threat to advancement but if it can be avoided altogether then the possibility of growth and improvement in all aspects of our lives are endless.