Throughout the course of my life, I’ve met a lot of people who know how to sit down and get a job done early so that they can relax and not have to worry about it for the rest of the day. I am not one of those people.
Personally, my style of work is to wait until the absolute last minute when I have no other choice but to get work done.
It might just be because I’m a writer. This past summer, the head of my internship said something that I find to be painfully true. “If you give a writer an hour to do something, they’ll take two.”
If that’s not on a board for wall décor, it should be.
Take for example my weekly columns. I like to pretend that I wait to write them because there’s a good chance something newsworthy will happen and what I write about will be more relevant. That’s only the case about 50 percent of the time.
In reality, I could have written this column last week and it still would have been relevant.
Every week, like clockwork, I tell myself that I’ll write my column when the inspiration strikes me, and every week at the last minute, I stare at a blank Word document for hours, trying to think of something to write – or in this case type.
When I finally think of something, it takes me no time at all to finish. The same goes for assignments, projects or anything else that I consider to take more effort than reading and drinking some tea.
I thought I was alone until this year when I saw one of my friends, a recent Gannon University graduate who goes to grad school at New York University, tweet about having similar problems.
I can’t be the only person who deals with this. I know that by now I’m supposed to have developed exceptional time management skills, but whenever I make a list or try to map out what I’m supposed to do that day, I normally just decide that I don’t feel like it and I make an excuse to put it off at the last minute.
On the plus side, it has turned me into a great multitasker, because normally I end up juggling multiple projects that are all due around the same time.
Anyway, the point that I am attempting to get across is that if you’re anything like me and you struggle to get things done in a decently timely manner, try to use this phrase to help motivate you.
Starting to work is the biggest obstacle you’ll overcome.
Even though I said that this topic could probably be relevant at any time of the year, I think around this time of the semester is when people are slacking off when it comes to getting work done early and waiting till the last minute – or at least I am.
Who knows, maybe next week I’ll finish my column before the very last minute, because I sure know that I can’t afford to waste two hours a week just staring at a computer screen.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
