Procrastination

 Procrastination. It's something that everybody deals with at one point or another, and it absolutely sucks. However, I didn't have big problems with procrastination until fairly recently, because before then, all of the homework I needed to do was just one or two pages of math problems which I could do in about 10 minutes. But when I entered 5th grade, there was a sudden surge of things I had to do after school, and procrastination reared its ugly head right through the door. 

 It turns out that I get distracted, very, very, easily when I do any piece of work that takes too much time. One minute I'm doing homework and the next I'm having thoughts about being kidnapped and murdered because I watched something that I shouldn't have and now I'm scared. Point is, I kept on getting distracted and having to rush at the end of the week to finish my work.

 So, of course I wanted to find a way to stop procrastinating, but when I asked my parents for help on how to deal with them, it basically boiled down to "just stop it" which wasn't helpful at all. 

 Then, one day, me and my father watched this TED talk about procrastination, (which you can search up online) and they compared the brain to a ship. The man steering the wheel, or the rational decision maker, is what drives you to work on stuff, like homework and tests. However, procrastinators also have the Instant Gratification Monkey, which is what makes you procrastinate. The two of them can cooperate when you're having fun or working on a short project, but after a while the monkey starts to get bored and hijacks the wheel to direct you to more entertainment. 

 So, how do procrastinators get anything done? Well, this is because there is one more person on the ship. The Panic Monster. When the deadline gets too close, the Panic Monster appears, and scares away the monkey, allowing the Rational Decision Maker to take control and finish the job. This is also why people don't procrastinate while actually in school, because the deadline for classwork is so short that the Panic Monster is always there to scare away the monkey.

 Now, this is good, but how do you actually stop procrastinating? Now, you can't truly "stop" procrastinating. Whether you like it or not, the Instant Gratification Monkey is here to stay. However, I do have some tips that have helped me out, and I hope are able to help other people too. One thing I have done to stop it, is go to a room without any distractions. To do this, I went over to my parent's room, and worked on my dad's spare computer, and I didn't get distracted. Another thing you can do is plan and keep track of what you have to do for the week and when you are going to do it. This won't fully mitigate procrastination, but it can help with it. 

 Anyways, have a nice day, and see you in my next blog!