Sunday 6 February 2011

Once again wasting time

Here I am again, with my final exam drawing ever closer, writing another blog post and once again just generally wasting time.

I often find myself scouring blogs or Wikipedia for things that interest me.  It will start out with an interest in a certain subject or topic and I will find myself clicking link after link, and going off on tangents; I end up reading about things that are not at all related to the initial topic, but none the less interesting.  I can often spend hours doing this; hours some would say much better spent revising or working, but not to me.  I can never see a thirst for knowledge as a waste of time, for by increasing your own knowledge base you are bettering yourself (or at least that's how I justify it to myself!).

It was by this that I came across a post talking about a book by Neil Fiore about procrastination (a topic well known by me!).  Instead of attributing it to laziness that can simply be cured by a good old fashion dose of hard work, he delves deeper into the psychology of it.  He associates procrastination as a mechanism for coping with anxiety, especially that stemming from starting or completing a task.  He sees it as a method of resisting pressure from authorities, as a method of lessoning fear of failure by providing you with a decent excuse for poor performance; you simply didn't try very hard.

I find this idea intriguing and when applied to myself probably largely true.  I often put off work and keep putting it off until the pressure truly mounts and I find myself rushing frantically, reprimanding myself for not starting sooner.  Yet despite this, I never learn and will continue with this behaviour every time after.  I have always been one who did well in school, doing well in my GCSEs with minimal effort and well in A-Levels without increasing that effort level.  However this started to cause problems when I hit uni and the work became significantly harder, yet my effort levels didn't increase.  In fact I probably now find more things to distract myself with.

Is all this a bad thing? Probably. Will I regret not working harder later in life? Quite possibly, but for now it is exactly what I wanted so I hold no regrets.

As the English philosopher Bertrand Russell once said - "the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" an adage I choose to live by.

9 comments:

  1. that's the thing about regrets though, they always come when it's too late to do anything about the reason you have them. I'd say work now, you'll need to learn self-dicipline sooner or later.

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  2. I know, I know its odd really. Anything like uni work (exam revision, coursework) I just put off. However any time I have an actual job I focus solely on doing my work and doing it well (a bit of a perfectionist really). And I spent a year in industry working for Xerox so at a proper 9-5 job with a salary. It seems that when its for my benefit alone I just can't be bothered, weird I know.

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  3. I know what you mean about getting lost in wikipedia, going link to link. It's just rarer for me, hah. But once I start, it's always the same way.

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  4. The excuse seems very true when it comes to the way I handle assignments. I probably want to look good in spite of doing it the night before :/

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  5. I hit the wall earlier than you. GCSEs, perfectly fine, As across the board. Dropped out of A-Levels my second year. I've come back for another go though and doing much better this time.

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  6. Hehe, I do the exact same thing. Fascinating stuff I have to say.

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  7. wasting time? no such thing. just recharging your genius is my excuse :D

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  8. i enjoy wasting time, so im not actually wasting time :)

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  9. It's amazing how wikipedia articles can draw you in with their knowledge. I often find myself spending hours reading there as well. Just live the way you live and be happy with yourself! :) though it is extremely hard breaking out of normal cycles.

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