This is a major achievement for me. At only 7:00 PM, I finished and submitted my homework – three writing assignments due by 11:55 PM tonight. Waiting for church service to begin earlier this afternoon, I was feeling guilt at having procrastinated doing my homework and various other duties (like the Sunday School Lesson) on Saturday, and over the past week in general. I knew I wouldn’t be home until 4:30 PM, and I was feeling stress at having a lot to do tonight with little time to do it in. I decided to try making a simple, non-threatening schedule.
I quickly made a list of things to do after church with time slots for each, and showed it to Doré, which automatically provided a certain amount of accountability. I believed, but mostly hoped that this would work because of something I learned whilst reading an issue of Scientific American Mind - a magazine dealing largely with the science of human behavioral psychology.
To summarize the article: keep descriptions of tasks short and simple and you will be far more likely to actually do them. Want to make an exercise plan? Describe the workout in as few words and sentences as possible, and you just might follow through. So I did that with my list. When I got home from church, I organized by putting some assignment due dates with automatic reminders into my Google calendar, had dinner with the family, popped an Adderall®, and went straight to the computer where I produced electronic volumes of expertly-written, compelling, and highly relevant text. I was so proud of myself that I decided to use the extra time describing it here on the Blog of Light.
What’s that? Oh, you’re wondering about that whole “popped an Adderall®” thing? Hmm. I was kind of hoping you’d just let that go without making me explain, but it’s a fair question for the eleven (up from seven!) readers of the Blog of Light, which comprises family and close friends.
This might go long, but I’m going to rush through it because also on my task list were “table tennis on the Nintendo® Wii™” and “watch Defying Gravity on TV tonight.”
Casual or less-interested readers should stop here. You’re done.
I may not have mentioned directly my problem with procrastination, but you may have figured it out. Maybe when you noticed weeks passing between blog posts even after I declared my dedication to regular writing for mental exercise. Or maybe when I mentioned along the way that I am a person with attention deficit disorder (ADHD is the official term, though my version of it lacks the “Hyperactivity” component) you scrambled to look up the symptoms that might explain me after all these years. You would have seen things like “difficulty waking up in the morning, and severe procrastination.”
That’s what I hate about ADHD symptoms. They all sound like a description of someone’s lazy bum of an uncle or friend’s dad. Of course a lot of ‘normal’ people can have similar symptoms without having ADHD, which is a measurable physiological condition dealing with activity levels in various lobes of the brain. It’s the persistence, disruptive nature, and severity of these symptoms which set apart those blessed with the gift of ADHD.
Ever woken from general anesthesia? Remember desperately wanting to wake up and talk, full of relief that the surgery was over and you were still alive – but you couldn’t stay conscious for more than a few seconds? The first few minutes of every single morning are nearly that bad for me. My brain takes longer to shake off the sleep, so I have no balance or coordination. I stumble into the next room, sometimes hitting my head or stubbing my toe along the way, and try to stay upright for at least two minutes, because if I touch that bed again, it’s all over.
Why am I being so dramatic? Because I want you to understand when I explain what procrastination is like for me. Everybody procrastinates, and I don’t want you to write this off as common procrastination shared by all of humanity. There is often nothing wrong with the way most people procrastinate. In fact, there can be very good reasons for procrastination, and procrastination can be a positive thing. Don’t believe me? Read Paul Graham’s brilliant essay on “Good and Bad Procrastination” at http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html
He begins like this:
The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn’t always bad?
Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you’re not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
Mine is generally not the good kind. In fact, where most people procrastinate at an amateur level, I, and many people with ADHD, procrastinate at a PhD level: the kind of procrastination that would stun and horrify most of you.
“But surely you wouldn’t waste an evening watching a movie on TV when you purposely set that time aside from work and all other committments to study for a test in the morning? Especially if it’s a movie you’re not interested in, or even a movie you hate.”
Sorry, but yes. The year was 2000, the class was multi-variable plane geometry, and the movie was The Legend of Bagger Vance. I ended up re-taking that class, to answer your next question.
“Please tell me there’s no way you would get up at 5 AM to cram for a test at 8 AM, and then waste over an hour posting comments about Arsenal to ESPN’s Soccernet.com message boards before you even opened a book.”
Can’t do that, I’m afraid. That was 2003. The class was “Operating Systems and Concurrency,” which I had to re-take. Everything I said about Arsenal that morning was true, though. They were undefeated that season.
I tell you these terrible stories from the past because I want to give you some perspective on this evening’s “simple” accomplishment.
“But Kevin, are you sure that these mythic feats of irresponsibility are well and truly behind you?”
Yes.
