Can do it later.. Procrastination-Your enemy

Have you ever been in a hurry to complete a task at work and you realize that you could have done this a lot earlier? Have you missed your office cab because you took some extra time sleeping? Have you always delivered your work right at the neck of the moment rather a bit earlier? Have you always been writing until the last minute of the exam while you could have utilized the early hours properly? Have you been studying all night the previous day of the exam while you were playing video games the whole semester?

You are not alone!!!

It’s very common for anyone to ignore “time” and chill while time was running out for a very important work.

Why do we ignore time?

We all wish to be successful, rich and live longer. But, are we giving any importance to time like your wallet or your family? If you got no time, the money, family and your identity isn’t going to be with you. But why time isn’t considered a commodity? Because, it’s equal for everyone, unlike money. Weather, social conditions may vary country to country but time’s 24 hours for everyone alike no matter you are rich or poor. The capitalists understands the necessity and importance of time very much and that is why they not only hire you to do some work but they also hire your time. They know that your work can be improved so much that it can be squeezed to the time they pay you for ie., More work in 8–9 hours. No company hires you only to work without a deadline.

Malcom Gladwell said that if you spend about 10000 hours on what you want to be, you will be an expert in that field of interest. So, if success is going to be there in 10,000 hours, why aren’t we focusing on pushing us further? Why everyone isn’t an expert?

We are procrastinating!!

We are scrolling instagram stories while we can improve the format Of the presentation that we want to share to the project manager. We choose Instagram over the presentation such that when ETA is approaching, we simply edit a template and share it right away. You don’t realize that your work is nothing but a coloring book where you have filled the color and the template being the outline.

You are never going to get there and you will never get to your 10000 hours if you chose Instagram stories over what that’s necessary? You will always be a mediocre and your journey to success will be still delayed. You may say that you felt stressed out and checking out Instagram helped you to relax a bit. Do we really put down our phone only after 5 minutes of checking stories or do we forget the reality and scroll for hours together.

Despite the fact that the time’s the determining factor of success, we tend to lose our time to smartphone. Here are some facts,

• There are over 3 billion smartphone users in the world right now.
• More than 5 billion people own mobile phones, and over half of those are smartphones.
• People spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones.
• Americans spend around 5.4 hours a day using phones.
• Millennials are on their phones 5.7 hours per day, while baby boomers devote 5 hours to their smartphones.
• People check their phones 58 times a day on average with more than half of those occurring during working hours.
• 70% of mobile sessions are shorter than 2 minutes.
• Millennials spend 48 minutes texting per day, compared to the 30 minutes that boomers devote to this activity.

Source: https://kommandotech.com/statistics/

Consider yourself you to be a millennial or a 90’s kid who uses phone for about 5 hours a day and practices code for 2 hours a day. It would take 13.9 years for you to reach the 10000 hour mark. Your phone usage would be 76 whole days in a year which almost a quarter of a year. On the other hand, If you use phone for only 2 hours and practice code for 5 hours a day, you will be reaching the 10000 hour mark within 5.5 years. It’s like reaching your goal within half the time it would have actually took if you have been procrastinating.

Not only mobile phones may cause procrastination, many habits like overeating or addiction may let you lose yourself to time which you can never gain back. There are 100s of experts and researchers out there with a lot of buzzwords and inspiring content that can help you avoid procrastination. You can always check it out.

My simple approach to avoid procrastination:

Unlike business gurus or motivation speakers,I don’t have tremendous choice of words to convince you be productive. I haven’t reached my 10000 mark yet but ever since I developed a habit of doing things right away, things started to fall in place and therefore, I am sharing my best practice to improve productivity.

1. Do it first. If you have got something to do, complete the task without postponing and count the number of things that you did on time on that particular day. End of the day, you will feel satisfactory and content.
2. No Excuses: Be your own boss and never get convinced for any reason that you give yourself for not doing things on time.
3. Keep your phone out of reach when you want to be productive: Don’t tell me that you attend online class and how can I keep the phone away. What I mean is, it’s better to avoid mobile phone at all cost when you work and if it’s necessary Situation like online class, you can stop notification from WhatsApp, Instagram so that you don’t get distracted.
4. Delete the apps that you spend most time on: It might be intimidating to delete the app that you love and spend long hours. Many love youtube, tik tok, instagram and it’s okay to spend sometime and if you feel that the app is consuming your time too much, delete it right away. You are not going to lose anything.
5. Wake up earlier: Imagine you go to a destination earlier than everyone and you get a bag full of money. That’s very much equal to waking up earlier every day. Waking up earlier gives you extra energy than what you can get from that bag of money. The sunshine and the extra hour to sing and bath will Be absolutely relaxing and your day will be exciting than ever before.
6. Work out: Just don’t ask why? Simply work out every single day! Your body needs it!
7. Appreciate yourself: If you feel that you have done something remarkable without wasting time, just say to yourself “Good Job” just like Will Smith appreciates everyone in the movie Hancock!
8. Activity Log: If you really want to understand how much of time that you are wasting, you can pretty much use any notetaking app or a piece of paper to track how you spent a day. Do this for about 7 days and your upcoming week will correct itself that you will realise the change yourself. Every one hour, write down what you did the last hour and by the time you go to bed, you can understand how much of slog were there in your day.
9. Plan your tomorrow: After doing self study, plan your tomorrow and prepare a rough schedule if necessary. Knowing what’s pending for tomorrow helps you to prepare for the day with better mindset.
10. Do what you love: If you don’t love what you do and if you are still super productive, there is going to be no happiness and sooner, you might breakdown and procrastinate. Do things that you love or choose to love your work so much that you don’t find time to waste time!

Couple of things that helps me with improving my productivity.,

1. Tiny Change-Planner. This journaling diary is a fantastic planner with thoughts put into the design. It not only helps with scheduling, planning but also helps with adding values to life and work. You can journal anything from daily, weekly, monthly yearly etc. There are also stickers that will excite the child in you.
2. Notion App: This is not a 100% productivity app. It is just a customizable workspace just like one note and microsoft fluid. This app is my central repository of all my ideas, thoughts and I maintain my activity log in this App. I plan my next day in the notion app as well as the Tiny Change planner and then once the day is over, i would simply review, rate the day and then plan the next day.
3. Pomodoro Technique (Flow App) : The pomodoro technique is a very old time management technique which is still relevant. You work with no break for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. The Flow app in mac is a minimal one with pomodoro clock that you can just start the timer and go ahead and be productive. I have recently started trying this technique and I am a bit more focused during very important task that i should complete.

Here are links to the journal and the app if you would like to buy/try them:

Tiny Change-Planner: https://amzn.to/3hg5na0

Notion: https://www.notion.so/

P.S:

I don’t have a smartphone anymore. My daily screen time is approximately 14 hours and my non productive hours are approximately 4 and that’s when I read kindle. Instead of youtube and Instagram, i switched to kindle. My iPad doesn’t have Facebook or Instagram app. I use WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook with my wife’s phone only when I want to upload something and I don’t scroll feed during work hours. I am not claiming that I am super productive but I am just here trying to summarizing everything I did to stop myself from procrastinating so that this could be helpful for someone who spends too much screen hours.

Go ahead and get productive!!

Thanks for reading,

Priyason Pauldurai