Friday 19 March 2010

Roar!

I want to apologise for being absent from the posting, but I wont. I spent Monday through to Wednesday of this week studying, trying to get an economics essay for my Marxism class done. Wore myself out though, so didn't do any work yesterday, which is definitely a shame. I'll make up for it today (before I go see Alice in Wonderland tonight!), hopefully.

There is a boy in my philosophy class that was telling me how he get's his work done. Basically, he switches the parts of his brain that functions like a normal human and enters study mode. Aim seems to be to turn himself into a boring (but focused) person for the day. I am actually really jealous of his ability to do this. Focusing isn't something I've ever been very good at... unless I'm playing video games; I can focus on those pretty well - for hours. I remember sitting up through out the night playing on my Super Nintendo instead of sleeping. Now I wont allow myself a games consol in the house... my brother took the ps2 to his house, far far away and I stopped my mum getting me a ps3 for Christmas, just 'cause I know I'd never get anything done.

Trouble is, there's still enough to distract me from working. Normally, I need a 'beat-myself-up-day' which involves me sitting in front of the Mac, staring at the work I have to do and just not touching it until I'm angry enough at myself for being so ridiculous that I start reading and taking notes. The next day or two are the reading and planning days. Once I've started I'm normally ok and can carry on for ages, especially with my old friend, Mr Caffeine helping me out. But then I'm tired and stressed and need a nothing day all over again before the process can loop round for me to actually do the writing part. I'd love to just skip those nothing days... They're such a waste of time! Other people can study every day, all day. Why can't I?

If anyone knows the trick to this whole taking control of your mind malarky, let me in on it!

Will power is a strange concept I reckon. Basically it's the faculty that picks what it is that I want and it decides what I want based on the information about the options that are stored in my intellect. But everything has positives and negatives so it's not a clear cut decision... so how is it the will picks which one it wants to go for? The will is just part of me, so it's me that's picking and I imagine the choice is based on desire or something, right? So, what does that mean...?

What desire am I fulfilling by sitting around avoiding working? I know that I have the desire to not fail, but that's further away than my desire to avoid stress. Short term trumps long term. So my question to you, is how can I convince my brain to do what I want it to do and focus on those long term desires a little bit. At least for long enough to get these 9 essays done!

Right, that's enough from me. I shall return to this economics essay of mine!

1 comment:

  1. Maybe you should read my article on procrastination, but I don't think it's gonna help much though. But one of the solution to "mitigate" this problem is try not to plan too much, like you should plan to write an essay within this week instead of any specific day. If you plan too much, you are likely to get frustrated since there are too many uncertainties in life. So just act on your spontaneous impulse!

    W

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