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But only when on a deadline…

It’s hard to know how to react to psychological research saying procrastination is now an official mental illness affecting about 20 percent of the population. The cynic notes immediately this telling tidbit: psychologists warn these people need therapy.

Therapy, in case you didn’t know, is how psychologists stay in business. With all these psych majors pumping out of the liberal arts pipeline, there seems an obvious need to create more loonies—even if the loonies are generally functional, generally sane most of the time. There’s a lot of money in just slightly crazy. More drugs to dispense, more hours logged.

But that could be another sign of mental illness: denial. It could be humans have wires crossed in their brains all the time. Just add it to the list of human conditions. Human: man or woman existing in the throes of Kant’s constants of birth, death, and sexuality, but whose pandemic denial of evolutionary-societal conflicts makes them generally a little bit nuts.

Wouldn’t be hard to prove there are a lot of crazy humans, would it? It may be we only notice crazy when it’s really crazy, like-a-violent-monkey crazy or eat-your-liver-with-some-fava-beans-and-a-nice-chianti crazy. Maybe more subtle types of crazy we just tolerate and label as the character flaws that make a person human.

Maybe immediate manic skepticism or depressive acceptance of either theory is a bit too, well, bipolar. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Maybe that’s a lie too. Doesn’t matter, the research shows what it shows: procrastination is a mental illness and the digital age isn’t helping things one bit.

I remember thinking ten years ago about how many kids I knew were on Ritalin and I wondered if too much stimulation—TV, radio, the Internet, cell phones, movies, music, games, well, you name it—wasn’t contributing to everybody having so much trouble paying attention. We know now that multitasking isn’t what it’s cracked up to be—it actually makes one slower—and I may not have been far from the mark according to the procrastination research.

So here’s what’s up: Chronic procrastination is more common than depression or phobias, and doesn’t affect any particular demographic. Rather, it affects people across racial, gender, and socio-economic lines:

“[I]t encourages depression, lowers self-esteem, causes insomnia, and indirectly affects health by discouraging visits to the dentist or doctor. Sufferers are also more likely to have accidents at home involving unmended appliances.”

They think procrastination is on the rise because of email, web-surfing, social networking, texting, YouTube, blogging, et cetera, et cetera.

But it’s not a new thing, not by a long shot. Time-wasters (”sufferers” of procrastination), they think, are hard-wired to be that way by evolution, by survival instinct. Back when we lived in caves, we only turned on the go-getter attitude when absolutely necessary, like when a saber-toothed tiger was staring us down, and hurrying the hell up suddenly mattered. So then, add this to list of human conditions as well: generally lazy until given a good reason to do something.

Take a good look at orangutans, how they lay about (you can see them on one of the Discovery channels), and then walk by a backyard with a hammock some time. Do you think there’s a difference?

It wasn’t really clear from the article about the study what was meant by “therapy.” When my grandmother was growing up, “therapy” entailed her parents taking switch to her backside. They didn’t know that causes other problems perhaps worse than laziness, which is why we (as a society) don’t do that anymore.

Today we use deadlines, and chronic procrastinators push the limits of those deadlines. Researchers say it’s not true when they tell themselves they work better under pressure; they just have selective memories and put those times they succeed in their mental pockets while conveniently forgetting the times they crashed and burned. One more human condition: We kid ourselves a lot.

How about a different, more radical proposal than trying to rewire a brain hardwired for energy conservation (i.e., chronic procrastinator)? How about we slow down and enjoy life from time to time? Maybe it’s the workaholic who’s crazy, instead?

Yeah, I know. Not gonna happen. I suppose brains are easier to rewire than entire achievement-driven societies.

Tags: Blogging, Business, Computers, Fun, Internet, News, Productivity, Ramblings, Technology by JasonLeeMiller - 1 Comment »

Guest post by Daniel from Blinkdagger

We all strive to find the right balance. Sometimes we work too much. Sometimes we play too much. Sometimes we sleep too much.

In order to be truly productive, you need to find the perfect mixture among the three, which is not as easy as it sounds as it is constantly changing day by day. Working 24 hours won’t necessarily make you more productive. In fact, it causes you to burnout and unable to function. This is when you look for resources in how to work smarter and how to get things done, which will ultimately lead you to be more productive. But isn’t it true that even after reading Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, visiting Lifehacker and Zenhabits, you still struggle in completing your to do list?

Finding applicable GTD tips and following up with good execution is what is going to get things done. Nothing is more discouraging than trying a tip and failing to live by it. You revert back to your old habits. You are back to where you started, except you wasted more time.

In this post I want to share with you a Work, Play, Sleep (WPS) matrix and how taking a step back in identifying your WPS profile will help you make the most out of your GTD tips. [Read more →]

Tags: Productivity by Ritu - 6 Comments »

” How the hell am I going to get this done? I had planned on finishing this within a month and it’s already three months past? I never have time to do anything? Work, home, kids, family and this side project. I should have never started, after all where is the time to ensure maximum productivity?”

Do you ever ask yourself these questions or sit in a corner and ponder? Well, that’s exactly where you are going wrong! Sometimes all it takes is a plunge towards reality to develope a strategy for staying productive. To be honest, the above statement relates very much to me as I used to think the same way. But I have made some changes in my life which has helped me stay on top of my productivity game.

Quit Complaining

I have found this to be the biggest obstacle when it comes to productivity. Complaining we don’t have time to do so and so only makes us miserable and we certainly won’t achieve anything. The best way to ensure maximum output from yourself is to have a peace of mind. There is only 24 hours in a day and no matter how hard we try or complain about this, it’s going to stay the same. It’s not going to change, just face it. It’s not the time we lack, it’s the management aspect of it that we haven’t been able to conquer. [Read more →]

Tags: Productivity by Ritu - 11 Comments »

Success to some can come easy and to some it’s years and years of hard work. Sometimes the best thing that can motivate us towards reaching our goals can be as simple as words by someone else. The other day I picked up an old book ” Jump Start Your Brain ” by Doug Hall. Although old the the content in the text is something we can apply forever. As I was reading I came across some quotes that might be just the thing we need to discover the secrets to success. Although simple, these quotes provide very powerful meaning and insight and what we should do in order to reach the peak of success.

All quotes by Richard Saunders

Every shot you don’t take is a guaranteed miss

This one is a no brainer. If you have an idea make sure to put it in action. If you take a shot, it’s either a hit or a miss. If you don’t, it’s a guaranteed miss.
Put that idea in paper and in action, trust me, with determination you will get where you want.

When familiar people try to solve familiar problems, they tend to develop familiar solutions

You want to be a one man army? Fine! But sometimes the best way to get things done and find a solution is to team up with people that are passionate about your idea and work together. Come on now, you can share a little bit of that money by partnering up, can’t you? ( by the way, I am available ). Go ahead and find somebody to work with you, two minds are better than one and four eyes will certainly see better than two. [Read more →]

Tags: Business, Productivity by Ritu - 4 Comments »

All work and no play is never a good thing. Being that this is a guest post at “Work N Play” and not “Work N More Work”, I thought I’d offer some advice on how you can better do your work so that you still have time to play. I hear many complaints from friends, family, and colleagues that there are not enough hours in the day to accomplish what they want. One reason for this is because we are not very efficient with our time. Other times, we just don’t know how to go about solving problems or how to ask for help.

This post is aimed at helping you make the most out of your limited time. These tips alone are a major reason why I was able to get through college and graduate school. I’m sure that they will prove helpful to you throughout your daily life as they can be applied to almost everything we do, especially blogging! So without further ado, here are the four things to keep in mind to help you learn more efficiently and to increase productivity:

1. Don’t be Afraid to ask Questions!

There’s the classic saying that “There are no dumb questions . . . only questions that are not asked”. Most of the time, when you have what you might think is a “dumb question”, the odds are good that someone else probably has the same question on their mind. In one of my undergraduate classes, there was this fellow who had no shame when it came to asking questions. While some of his questions sounded pretty dumb indeed, the majority of them were questions that I also had lingering in my mind. Of course, I was too embarrassed to ask them myself, so I always gave him my silent gratitude. I could always count on this guy to ask the question that I was too afraid to ask. Unfortunately, not everyone will be as lucky as me. Sometimes, questions that need to be asked are never asked and everyone is worse off.

So don’t be embarrassed and ask whatever question comes to mind; chances are good that someone else will be silently thanking you for asking that question. In addition, you’ll find that your productivity will benefit by asking more questions because you’ll have a better idea on what needs to be done.

2. Collaborate with Others!

Collaboration is a powerful tool that only gets better when more people are involved. I always try to make a conscious effort to collaborate as much as possible on each one of my own projects. Back when I was still in college, I always tried to get my friends to sign up for courses with me. Being able to share ideas, work on homework sets together, and study for tests together made these classes much easier than if I were taking the class solo. By sharing knowledge amongst ourselves, my friends and I were much more efficient and productive as a collective whole. Everyone benefited. If I didn’t know how to do one of the problems in a particular problem set, the chances were good that one of my friends knew how to do it. By developing a network of people you can collaborate with, you can effectively tap into their strengths and potential and use them to your advantage.

If you’re used to working alone, you should really expand your horizons. This day and age, its extremely difficult to do anything by yourself. The sooner you start cooperating and working with others, the sooner your productivity will soar. Learning was meant to be interactive, so make friends and make connections so that everything will be easier in the long run. [Read more →]

Tags: Productivity by turtie - No Comments »

If it doesn’t exist on the first page of google it’s not there, right? Wrong! There are plenty of websites that are fun and productive that most of us don’t know about. In this post I have tried to collect some of them that might prove to be useful or plain fun for you to explore.

10. Uncyclopedia
This is the contender of Encyclopedia but the only thing that is different is the content itself. All the content and information you will find here are nonsense that are put forward with a straight face. If you are looking for facts and figures this certainly isn’t an option but if you are in need of hours of fun go ahead and check it out.

9. EXPN
No, it’s not ESPN. The ‘S’ is replaced by ‘X’ as it stands for Extreme. This site covers the dangerous aspects of sports, such as skating, surfing, motorcross and X Games. You can also find photos and videos of death defying stunts along with the sports column.

8. Bargainist
Who doesn’t love a good bargain? This site is updated several times daily which searches the web for daily deals, coupons and bargains to get you those goodies for cheap. Also you can find links to over 50 retailers and online stores where you can get a bargain.
[Read more →]

Tags: Productivity, Reviews, Websites by Ritu - 8 Comments »