What Do You Do Instead…?
As one of my New Year’s resolutions, I decided to try and put an end to my procrastination - or at least cut back on it. That got me thinking, what do I usually do when I have work to do? The majority of my work is done on a desk in my room.
See, when I say work, it’s just things for my University. I don’t tend to get all that much work but when I am given it, I’m always thinking “I could be doing something I enjoy instead of this”. It’s probably why I try to put my time into other things with so much enthusiasm.
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The way I seem to lose most of my time is with Safari. If I have something I should be doing, I know full well that within minutes I’ll have Safari open and I’ll be looking for something else to do. Usually, I just open it up and check out digg.com. I don’t just read the home page, I’ll flick through the categories and check upcoming stories, too. Since I was introduced to this website, I’ve lost more and more time to it. I don’t often submit any news to it but it’s the only real way I find my technology news out. I’ve never been a fan of the news on television or newspapers - I’d rather not know something than know some of the bad things, so I go about quite oblivious to certain things. Back to digg, it can take me ages to go through and really read all the news, then the articles leading off from there. Then I try to bookmark my favourite places, either locally or to del.icio.us, using Pukka.
Still in Safari, I check out various other time-consuming websites such as 9rules, checking out the blogs, MacUpdate, checking out the new and updated Mac applications and other random websites such as CSS galleries.
Just in this one application alone, I can lose hours of my time! I think to myself “I’ll just read this page, then I’ll go back to work…”, but it doesn’t happen. I’ll read an article, find a link to somewhere else and follow it around until I find a page that really doesn’t interest me.
Next up, Mail. My second biggest time waster. Much like Safari, I launch Mail as soon as my computer starts up. I have it checking for mail from seven different accounts, every five minutes. Instead of putting time aside to check, as soon as I hear the noise or see a little red star on my Mail icon, I’m straight into it and seeing what’s happening. The majority of the time it’s just spam however, when I do get an email through that interests me, I’ll read it, check out any relating websites and if necessary, reply to the email.
Even though I lose a lot of time because of this, it does help keeping my Mail organised. I know where everything is from my contacts, so I don’t really want to change my system (or lack thereof).
Organising. Even though that sounds like a big job in itself, I find myself organising and sorting my computer more and more when I have work. I’ll make sure that all my folders are easily accessible, with names I can remember and that every document is filed away correctly. Yes, I’m a little obsessive over these things but it can sure beat doing work.
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I know full well that I should just get on with things and take breaks every once in a while. It’s not that I don’t get any of my work done, it’s always completed and always on time. I just seem to do it in the most inefficient ways. I’m hoping that, as part of the resolution, I’ll start breaking this habit and get on to doing whatever work I’m needing to do before going back to the things I want to do. Sometimes I’ll even put off things I want to do, just to check out digg. I think it comes from a lack of concentration. I’ve always been a multi-tasker and I’ve never really managed to stay focused on a particular task without switching between a few things. It’s something I need to work on, really.
So, what do you do instead of things you should be doing?
12:45 am
One word: Facebook.
9:29 am
A good idea that I sometimes need to do to get myself to actually concentrate, is when I decide I need to start work I put my keyboard in another room (wireless) — this usually works because I’d rather do work than be assed to get up and go into the other room. Eliminate distractions… I also turn of my monitors; that helps greatly.
I also don’t so much “do things” instead of what I should be doing: I never start doing them in the first place. Like, I get home and jump on the computer and be like, “I’ll do my homework at 7pm.” Then 7pm comes and goes and I’m still on my computer saying, “I’ll do it in 15 minutes” and never getting around to it.
I read an article over on Neowin.net forums that I actively visit and there was a guide on how to lock your Windows PC down during certain hours — so you can’t use it even if you’ve got a password. The guy that posted it said it’s good to keep kids away from the PC late at night, but all the replies were from collage students saying that it would help them to get of the PC and do some work. btw, sorry about the long comment.