BOB

Ah.. procrastination. This is most definetly an area in which I have a huge problem.

The reason that I procrastinate is to avoid doing something I don't want to do; my philosophy is 'don't do today what can wait until tomorrow'. Unfortunately, when you have many commitments and you put off all of them, you will undoubtedly run out of time to accomplish everything. Of course, what would make the most sense is to sit down and finish something as soon as you get it. But I have a huge problem with sitting down and focusing. I can only finish something when I have JUST ENOUGH time left to finish it. If I start working on my math homework when I still have 5 hours of free time ahead, that homework will take 5 hours. Because I will stop after every question and get distracted by something. That something generally (on bad days) being THE DREADED INTERNET (dun dun DUN). However, on good days, I have (at least somewhat) valid reasons for putting something off. For example:

The reason I'm writing this BOB right now is
a) To avoid doing the supplementary problems
b) To avoid doing my physics homework

And the reason I haven't written the BOB earlier is
a) I typed up the agenda for tomorrow's meeting to avoid it
b) I reorganized all my files on Windows media for 2 hours to avoid it (yup.. this is where my 'bad' procrastinating took over)
c) I spent 20 mins writing down everything I have to do in my agenda to avoid doing all the things I was writing down.

Recently, I read this incredibly interesting article that describes a phenomenon called "Structured Procrastination" by John Perry. He describes my procrastination method to a T. I try to procrastinate in a productive way as often as possible, instead of just surfing the internet or going on msn. I think it is really quite unrealistic for me to try to stop procrastinating, so this is an honest way of improving myself and getting things done. If any of you think that making a schedule or locking yourself in an empty room after school with no way out is a bit too extreme, maybe this method can help you get things in a bit more control.

Here's the article: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
And thanks to the author, John Perry, for inspiring me to trick myself into working :)

And now, to start on that math homework...