I’m Terrible At Time Management

If There Were 25 Hours in a Day, I’d Waste All of Them

OpinionsOlivier Cadotte — Published November 5, 2018

Or, in my case, I had an extra hour to not be doing anything productive.

I don’t know what it is, but it’s always at this time of the year (a little after midterms) that I realize that I spend a lot of time not doing anything, and I leave a whole bunch of things like school work and actual work essentially to the last possible minute.

It always happens the same way, too. The realization that “oh, I haven’t actually done a bunch of my homework and assignments, and they’re due this week’’ falls on me like a bomb, leading me to essentially act like a shut-in doing work for about a week and a half at midterms to scramble and finish everything on time.

Or at least, that’s what I’d like to think, that at least this realization that I should probably get this work started leads me to diligently finish everything I need to do in an appropriate amount of time, leaving ample time to reread everything and make sure it’s the best work I can give.

To tell you the truth, I somehow manage to procrastinate being in crisis mode.

Take one example, an assignment I gave in just this week. I gave myself about two and a half days to finish it, as I had the weekend off work. While it was an assignment I had weeks to do, I left it to the last weekend, but said ‘’it’s ok, I can finish it this weekend, not a problem!’’

In no particular order, here are just a few things I did instead of working on my assignment during that 60 hour period:

-Watched less than half of Saving Private Ryan at one in the morning;
-Watched about three hours of a live stream of somebody playing the drums in Rock Band for charity;
-Laid on the couch thinking to myself “I really should get working on this assignment at some point’’ for more hours than I dare admit;
-Took three different naps;
-Refreshed Twitter about 1000 times per day;
-Went to play in a trading card game tournament to “clear my head’’ (I won a single round out of four);
-And I started reading a book I received last year that I hadn’t even opened yet, read about ten pages, then felt guilty about not doing my work, so I stopped reading it.

Seems like an easy fix at this point, right? I should just set my priorities straight, make a good headspace for myself, maybe adjust the feng shui of the den (is feng shui still a thing? I’ll have to look that up instead of studying later).

Trust me, I’ve tried, and my brain has decided that it has better things to do than do work, apparently. I have difficulty concentrating sometimes, which leads to me getting easily distracted; yet I still have this latent thought in the back of my mind telling me “Hey, you have work to do.’’ This latent work anxiety doesn’t stop me from not getting things started in a timely fashion, nor does it prevent me from sometimes completely forgetting about something I have to do.

I have a notebook that I specifically bought to take notes and keep track of appointments, things I need to do, people I need to message or call, and other important things I’m sure people do with their $20 notebooks.

As of me writing this, it’s somewhere in my room, where I’ll probably find it before the start of next semester, tell myself “I’m actually going to use this, it’s going to be so helpful!’’ It will then proceed to spend the rest of that semester laying on a desk or under some old school supplies, until I inevitably start this cycle again.

Am I a lost cause? Probably not, to be quite honest. I probably have to quit the really terrible habit I have of telling myself “I don’t need to write that down. I’ll remember it later, no problem.’’ The chances of me remembering afterwards without being reminded of it by someone else is about 1 in 50, 000 at this point, I think.

Honestly, me not taking down any notes is also really bad time management on my part. The time I apparently save not jotting down notes in the book I spent actual money on, or setting up a Google Calendar, or even just the old “tie a knot around your finger trick,” I spend three times longer freaking out about something I’ve left to the last minute (again).

A this point, I’ve kind of accepted that unless I hunker down and actually work on fixing this part of how I function, I’m going to end up stressing myself to death by my own fault, or get a really bad mark one time that will scare me into being an actual responsible adult who uses the goddamn notebook in his room.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, although the previously mentioned assignment I had to do, which I ended up finishing about 40 minutes before class time and arriving an hour late to class to give in, might be it.