Time Strategies: The Truth of the Matter

The truth of the matter is, I don't have time to procrastinate. That does not mean that I do not, but I have so much going on any given week I can not afford to procrastinate. When I do, the consequences are worse than taking the initial hit up front by doing whatever it is I am putting off. My motivation to procrastinate comes from a place of wanting down time, or time to do nothing, or something other than what I should be doing.

One way that helps me manage this is Time Blocking. Time Blocking every half hour out the evening before or the morning of a particular day helps to organize what I know I need to get done into chunks of time. Some people block weekly, but I prefer daily because so much can change. The blocks act as a skeleton. You know you need to complete the things in the blocks by then end of the day, and while they are blocked for a specific time frame, if need be blocking can be an edit as you go type of time management. The part of time blocking that I feel sets it apart from other time management advice, is that you can block in time for nonsense or social media, etc. This means you can still accomplish what you need to in a day, with blocked in wiggle room to give yourself healthy breaks.

Image Information: Weekly Time Blocking Example

 Source: Blogspot

For this assignment I read, Four Questions to Help You Overcome Procrastination by Peter Banerjea. He spoke of four questions that can help you overcome procrastination. They were "me" questions. They have you focus on how choosing to will affect you rather than benefit you. The idea is instead of asking all the reasons why you can put it off, ask yourself all the reasons you can not afford to. He takes an interesting idea on self-evaluation and applying motivational tidbits. 

I liked the article, I am not sure simply asking myself why I can not afford to put it off will work for me, but he did mention making things easier by getting a head start on them, and I thought that was good. I often like to make myself sit down and do all of a project because breaking it up causes me to have spacey thoughts, but if I can work on the blending of broken work, maybe I will not feel so overwhelmed.

I will continue time blocking, as well as trying to break up work into bite-size, manageable pieces. With that being said, I feel like my weekly schedule for this course helps me do exactly that, and it blocks well. 

Love this assignment! 

Ali 

Sources:
Four Questions to Help You Overcome Procrastination. (2016, August 8). LifeHacker. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/four-questions-to-help-you-overcome-procrastination-1784833178