It’s just three more days before the birth of another year and I'm anxious. I wanna stick to my resolution this time. Every year I make a resolution and the furthest I’ve stuck with them was two weeks and it was in 2015, guys. It was basically an apocalypse for us 2000 borns. You guys know what I’m talking about. If you don’t , I’ll tell you: SSLC EXAMINATION -- an extremely overrated event in the life of every individual. Even plus two examinations weren’t that hyped up.
Anyway, because of the constant pressure to be a nerd at least for SSLC, I decided to do so, but even then, it lasted only two weeks. Now I’ve finally come to the realisation that to stick with the resolution and make it a success, I need to know myself. I need to observe my behaviour and I need to extend or reduce my previous one sentence or one-phrased resolutions such as ‘be a nerd’ or ‘study well’. That’s just not enough. And most importantly, I need to find my enemy. The opposite troop in my battle that is stopping me from achieving what I want.
After an in-depth observation of my behaviour for a while, I’ve finally acknowledged the elephant in the room; my procrastination instincts. Yes, I know everybody procrastinates. But I think my procrastination instincts are pretty unique.
I procrastinate by reading and watching YouTube videos on how not to procrastinate so much that I could probably write a book about it. I will explain to you how procrastination, who was just my acquaintance before, became my best friend. It was examination time again. It was a bright Sunday morning. I woke up at 7 with full determination that I will complete one chapter from each subject. I gathered my study materials and opened my textbook and that’s when I realised that I lacked motivation. So I thought ‘hmm, I should watch some motivational videos, probably Robin Sharma he’s so inspiring’ but then this other part of my mind started talking.
‘Nah..listen to Eric Thomas. He’s more motivating’ and it took an hour maximum to decide who was a better motivator and I ended up deciding that I should watch both of their videos. After spending an hour, I was brimming with motivation. I was all ready to study now. But then I asked myself a very important question. What is the perfect way to study? Well, I thought about it for a while and then I was suddenly reminded of Thomas Frank, a YouTuber who has all these cool study tips. Why didn’t I think of him earlier? So, I saw his videos and they were so informative. I decided to apply the POMODORO method he explained in his video. This is basically a technique which uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. So guys I started studying, okay. And I somehow made it to 25 minutes. I was so happy. Now I could rest for 5 minutes.
Then, I saw a music video by Steve Aoki called 'Waste it on me'. It was so cool and funny. Ken Jeong’s facial expressions and lip syncing really made me laugh. After watching it I realised that there was some sadness deep within me. I wanted to throw it away from me. So I decided to watch something more funny. I needed to. If I’m pleasant then only I can concentrate! I watched SNL. I watched Kate McKinnon’s different impersonations -- from Hillary Clinton and Kellyanne Conway to Justin Bieber. Is there anyone’s impersonation she can’t do?! Maybe I should learn to do impersonations as well. It’s always good to know stuff. If I’m good I could make money of it just like McKinnon. So I searched ‘how to impersonate’ on wikiHow. And this continued. Endless number of thoughts kept me busy. From top music videos to SNL and Shashi Tharoor's impressive-yet-hard-to- understand vocabulary. It took about three weeks to finally realise that I was procrastinating.
Damn.. I wasted so much time! I should stop procrastinating. But how do I do that? I searched videos on how not to procrastinate. And it took a while to come to another obvious realisation that I was procrastinating by watching procrastination videos. By the time I came to this realisation, it was a little late. And I studied with the limited time that I had.
Do you guys know why that happened to me? Because I didn’t wanna study at all. I was finding excuses to not study. They were all just distractions. As long as I do that, I will never be do what I actually should do. So I’ve now developed a new approach to make me do stuffs that I should be doing. Wanna know what that is? Be tough on yourself. Your mind will come up with a hundred things to distract yourself. Your mind will say ‘Dude you haven’t watched that movie?’, ‘You should text her’ or ‘You’re exhausted, you should sleep’ . But it’s your job to use your brain and tell your mind to shut up and keep on doing what you’re supposed to do. Be tough on yourself like a football or an athletic coach. And find a reason, a reason why you should be doing this or that.
If that reason’s genuine, you’ll find the motivation to do it. So my resolution this year is to read. To read and write like I’ve never done before. And no this time I won’t check wikiHow or YouTube on how to read effectively or how to concentrate or stuffs like that. I’m done procrastinating. I’m gonna keep tabs on all the things I gotta read and write. And as Aristotle said, ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit’.