April 26th, 2010 by Kevin Ngo
We have all heard how time is more valuable than money, but is it possible to have too much time? In terms of living life itself, probably not, but in terms of productivity, then I would say, yes. When you don’t have enough time, you will often get more things done than if you had more time than you needed.
I remember back in high school when most of my day was spent at school since I also played a team sport. By the time I got home, I only had a few hours to do my homework and study so it made me buckle down and get to work right away. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so even when I didn’t feel like studying, I still got myself to do what I needed to do.
Now when I got into college, things changed. I suddenly found myself out of class before noon time. By the time I got home, the sun was still out, lunch had barely passed, and I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted. Naturally, because of all this extra time, there was no sense of urgency to do my school work right away. I just told myself that it will only take a couple of hours and since I have so much time, I could just do it later.
At first, this wasn’t a problem. When it came down to it, I got my studying down by the time I went to bed. The problem was that I was making this action of waiting until later become a habit, and once that happened, I just kept pushing my studying further and further back in my day until I got to the point where I was staying up really late at night to get my work done. Do this for a few weeks and your energy level will just go down the drain.
Has this ever happened to you in the past? Do you normally get more things done during the weekday or the weekend? I got to thinking about this some time back when I found out a former co-worker of mine at a job I once had was making a lot of money running a side business. Since the job we were doing at the time was tedious and boring, I asked him why he just didn’t do his side business full-time. What he said made me realize why I was able to get so much done back in my high school days.
He said the reason why he still has the job is to force him to take the necessary actions for his side business. Without the job, he would simply have too much time on his hands and would just do what I did back in college, push everything back. He was making 3 times more money on the side business than at his job, but he said that if he quit the job, he would lose his drive.
So do you have too much time? If you find yourself procrastinating on things you know you should be doing, try filling up your time with other work so that when the time comes to take action, you won’t have time to put it off. This is why there is a saying about how if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.
Until next time…
Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.
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very well said thought. we do waste a lot of time when we have the time..
Thanks. It's easy to “do it later” when there's plenty of “later” available.
Wow – great post! It's amazing how much time we waste without even realizing it.
Yup, that's why I always have a stop watch on my desk 🙂
This is so true i remember when i was in college, i had my head on writing a magazine ,until a friend of mine advised me to put it off till am done with school cos it was going to affect me becos i was in my final year……. Now almost 3months after my graduation i cant just put my head down to write a single article. whenever i get great ideas i go to it and get kinda blocked i just dump it and tell myself i have a lot of time to make it happen…. Maybe I'll have to go get myself busy with something else so that zeal can just come back.
This is so true I remember when I was in school I came home and finished up everything I needed to do straight away. I would do my home work tidy up and take a shower brush my teeth. I now find myself unemployed so I have way to much spare time on my hands and cuase of this I'm allways putting off tidying job hunting and even my personal health and hygene.
After reading this I now know the problem and I will try and fill up some of my spare time with volentary work and I may even take up a hobby to take up even more time I have allways wanted to try archery maybe that would be a good thing to fill time.
Sounds like a good plan. Archery is fun.
just want to throw this out there. kinda wierd way to think about it but i kind of procrastinate in school for the challenge of “can i finish this before my body forces me to go to sleep?” any suggestions for breaking this feeling.
Derek – I think we've all done something similar when it comes to school. One of my cousins said waiting until the last minute helps her finish projects faster since it takes away the laziness. Of course, it was just an excuse to put things off until later.
The main reason why most people procrastinate on things like school work is because they associate a lot of pain to getting the work done. Who wouldn't rather spend their time doing something enjoyable right? This is why we will come up with reasons why waiting until later to do the work is “better” even though it's just an excuse to procrastinate.
I don't know what would work for you but what I did was put myself in an environment that made me get things like studying done, mainly, the library. I had too many distractions that provided me with “valid” reasons to procrastinate at home.
Another suggestion is to divide the work into 2 or more parts. If doing 1 of 2 parts still makes you want to procrastinate, then split it up further. Try 10 parts and just do 1/10 of the project for example. The point of doing this is really just to get you started. Typically, once you get started on school work, it's a lot easier to continue and many times, you will just end up completing everything in one shot. However, you still want to allow yourself to take a break after you finish 1 part. This way, the pain of getting the school work done is greatly reduced and much more manageable. Hope this helps.
Thanks man i will definitely try that. One more question if you could help me out is trying the make the best of high school. Its not all that exciting…well thats an understatement but i just wanna graduate and leave for college but i still got another year and a half. i feel like i cant survive that much longer thinking like that. Im a straight A student despite my procrastinating haha,wat do u suggest my mindeset be every morning waking up to go to school?
All I can say is that you should enjoy high school while you still can. Once college hits, life gets a bit harder. Once you graduate college and go out in the real world, well, I'll let you see for yourself :). Just do what you can to make your high school experience fun and memorable.