Procrastination

What is it about an impending 'deadline' that makes us find anything at all to waste time?

Uni exams are coming up, which everyone knows just means leaving the study to the last minute. My first exam is in a week from today, and so far today in the 6 hours I have been awake, I have driven home, which was 45 minutes down, once I was home I had some breakfast, another 15 down.

Once I have finished eating I decide I should go upstairs to the computer and get some work done. So what do I do? I come upstairs, sit at the computer and go check some blogs, some of my bookmarks and so on. Half an hour has passed.

OK it is definitely time to start work, so I open up Microsoft Word. Minimise it, and open up a game called Warblade. Half an hour later it is definitely time to start working!

Maximise word again, and decide I should read the specific chapter of the textbook I am about to summarise. Its a good start. I go back downstairs to grab the book out of my bag, and see todays newspaper sitting there. Unwrap it and take with me the sports section and the green guide.

Get upstairs, look through the sports section for some articles that I feel like reading, then go to the green guide and flick through the entire guide stopping to read the article about the Gruen Transfer, and about TV Writers. 30 minutes after coming back upstairs, it is definitely time to get back to my work.

I finally open up the textbook and read some the relevant information. Turn back to the computer, I have a whole week left until the exam so I may as well play another game of warblade. 30 minutes later, I should probably get some work done.

It's now 12:30 and all I've done is read the paper, play on the computer and read part of the relevant chapter.

The next 3 hours is essentially the same as the first three, except instead of reading the paper, I read some online forums, and instead of going downstairs I actually get some work done.

In the full 6 hours I summarised one topic in 140 words.

What is it about having something extremely important coming up, that makes us find any way possible to waste as much time as we can, instead of getting the sometimes simple task done.

Its now been 6 hours and 15 minutes, and the only extra achievement is that I have written another blog post, which will be entirely useless when it comes to my Banking Law exam next Thursday.