The little things

It’s been a while since I posted, I just had two snow days and I tried to be productive but I instead I just relaxed and did fun stuff which was nice. It felt good to have a day or two to completely forget about everything, I mean, now it’s sort of come back to bite me but it was nice at the time. That’s the thing with procrastination, it feels good at the time and you only learn to regret it later. I wonder if there’s something immature about procrastinating, I wonder if you procrastinate less as you get older because you can see the future consequences of your actions today. Or maybe it has to do with will power, you know you’ll regret it if you don’t study today and you know you should study today but there’s just no will power there. When a deadline is far away, I tend to not care about it when I have free time right now, I simply do not care. Sometimes, I don’t care about anything, I don’t care that school is getting more difficult, I don’t care that I have a lot of things to do, I ignore all of that and play games or read books. I’m not sure if that’s called “relaxing” or “in denial”, there’s a fine line between the two.

It helps me to use Google Calendar, that way I can schedule in my work times and my play times. I would say something like this to myself, “Ok, I’ll do differential equations for an hour and then I’ll play Pokemon for 10 minutes.” It helps me to add a fun thing at after a not fun thing so that I can be motivated to finish faster. I also find that this strategy helps me to avoid the study cram sessions that go all day and lead into an all nighter the day before an exam. I’ve also heard of people putting candies at various places on the page as they’re reading a textbook so that they get little rewards along the way, I would try that but I get all my textbooks used and who knows what’s in there.

I think this is a good mentality to go through life with because ultimately, you shouldn’t live your life at a sprint desperately trying to finish one thing after another. Elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then college, then a job, maybe a family, then that promotion, then another promotion, then grandkids, then you’re old, and then you die. I mean yes, you probably accomplished a lot and I’m sure people are benefiting from your work (maybe) but if you didn’t enjoy yourself and love life as you were living then what was the point? It’s the little things in life that make life worth living, I think people should take a moment to appreciate and be grateful everyday, maybe try something new everyday too. Life can be fun sometimes.