Procrastination

I woke up today with a free schedule and full intentions to get a lot of school work done. It's now nearly 8pm and I'm sitting here wondering where my day went. I haven't gotten much of anything done, and the day is almost over. What was supposed to be my Productive Wednesday has fallen victim to procrastination - lost in a sea of excuses, magazine articles, TV reruns and internet joke sites. Computers have become the central aspect of our lives as Americans, and while they have made it possible for us to be more connected and more productive than ever before, they have made the art of slacking off far more enticing; with endless hours of pointless entertainment and distractions (not to mention Facebook) calling out to us when we seem at our most determined.

So how can the internet be used to combat all of its own distractions? It definitely takes a lot of self control from the user. Or if, like me, you are lacking in that department, thankfully there is a solution. There's a computer program called SelfControl that came out a few years ago that I swear by. You select a list of websites you wish to temporarily block (goodbye Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) and how long you want to block them for, and you're set to go on and focus on your work without your traditional distractions. It's a great tool and has managed to get me through many situations - I practically worshipped it when I was writing my novel, and it's great for essays and research paper. So there is a way out of the endless sea of distractions the internet holds for those with the tendency to procrastinate, but you still have to contain the drive to remember to use the program in the first place. I sure didn't today.

That desire to still do your work, to sit down and commit to completing a project, is truly what is at the heart of motivation. It's something that must be self driven, that no computer program or pill could possibly provide. Yet as elusive as it seems, that type of drive is deep within all of us, and it comes out when we do truly find something we are passionate about and makes us unstoppable. I just wish it was as easy to find that as it is to find a bunch of mind-numbing, time draining YouTube videos.