Battling Procrastination: Part 5 (Trial and Error Methods)

I haven't done this post for weeks! But no worries, it's not because I procrastinated. Well, it's not because I procrastinated too much. I think I'm improving lots over these past few weeks. I drew/sketch a lot, I read book and graphic novels, and just tried to do as many things as I can.

It does get overwhelming, what's with works at school that just never seems to end... But I learn a few tricks to get things done. Although some of these things were fairly new and my tendencies to not follow them through sometimes gets in the way.

1. Write a To Do List

Yeah, yeah.. everyone said a to do list can help tremendously with getting the day going productively. However, if you have work like me where decisions and things constantly change, it would be hard to actually follow those to do lists. For instance, you might plan for a workout at 4 pm, shower at 5 pm, do lesson plans at 6 pm and so on, then suddenly something happened at school at the last minute and you had to stay way past evening. I felt discouraged because this happened almost everyday! Those to do lists felt incredibly useless. So my workaround this is that I decided to just embrace my flexible attitude and lets a few things slide without affecting my feelings. The stress is not worth it. The downside is that I lose lots of exercise time because I don't exercise pass 6 pm to avoid extra energy at night that would disturb my sleep time.

2. Get Motivations

The thing about motivation is that sometimes they're too abstract. I used to feel highly motivated in my younger days just from the satisfaction of finishing a job. Now, that satisfaction is just not enough. I don't know what happened to me! Motivational words do not work on me. Serves me right for having a heart of stone. So I decided to try new things like sharing whatever I'm doing on Instagram or on Blogger. You know, just sharing stuffs with others who have my line of works, who could relate to me, or into drawings. Whenever I see those stuffs online I felt tiny feelings of accomplishment. Like when I was writing the Bicara Berirama script in Bahasa Melayu despite having no passion for the language or talent for it, I took a picture of it and posted it on Instagram and actually thought I did the unimaginable. Mind you, I got a little help from my talented students, but still a large creative gist of the script was written by me, and it almost drive me crazy. Therefore, the mere thought of completing something I have no confidence in actually motivated me to do better in other things; like drawing!

3. Don't think too much

At the start of this battling mission, I used to think and imagine things like "I will sleep early tonight", "I will exercise this evening" or "I will wake up early in the morning". While picturing things can help you moving, overthinking it can make you lazier. It is what I think they called an illusion; that you think you will do it and you can do it but ended up not doing it because it didn't manifest itself much more than just an imagination. So, I decided to not things too way ahead. Opting instead to just do stuffs I know I want to do. It does help me be productive, but yes, there was an inclination for me to still imagining wild things I know I do not want to do. Being productive, for me, is more about doing things you really like and enjoy every bit of it. For example, forcing yourself to play a game when you do not want to at the moment take the fun out of it. And when that happened, you felt like it is a chore, thus you do not want to go through with it, resulting in not being productive.

Bonus: Try some fun rewarding Android apps

This one is a bonus because I haven't experience the long term effect. A few days ago I installed The Fabulous on my smartphone. It has this clean and nice to look at interface, with articles about good habits as well as interactive to do lists. I've been diligently following the habits I placed as routines, and every time I updated whatever habit I managed to finish it rewarded me with achievements and more fun articles to read. What can I say, I like to read stuffs.