The Mid-Term

File under Procrastinate

I’m a bit of a procrastinator. Shocking to those who know me, I know. However, early in my grad school career I tried to change that fact. When assigned a mid-term exam, I decided to knock it out immediately, but Parkinson’s Law was in full effect. I had two weeks for the take home test and I started right away. I spent two weeks working on, taking a break from, and coming back to the test. In the end, on the last day I was still finalizing my thoughts and answers. I realized as I submitted the exam how inefficient I had been. I had read over and over my answers and thought over and over about how I could improve them; all without any appreciable improvement in my product.


I decided to change my approach for the final exam. This time I immediately opened up the exam, read the questions, and thought about how long it would take me to finish it. I decided on 5 hours. I then waited until the last day, 6 hours before it was due (everyone needs a little buffer!) and I started. Complete focus for that entire time. Clock ticking. Pressure’s on. At the 4 hour mark I realized I was reading over my answers trying to improve them and I decided to pack it in.

I realized that in a deliberate approach to procrastinate on my task until the last minute, I freed up available time for other things. The mid-term took me 2 weeks, the final took me 4 hours.

How often do we attack something immediately and spend more time on it than what is needed?

By the way, I got a better grade on the final.

The Daily Antidote
Identify the time needed to accomplish a task, and then regardless if you do it right away, or at the last minute, take no more than that amount of time.

Song of the Day
In honor of creating more time for yourself, the song of the day is Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.