This post was written by Shaun.

“I don’t have time” is the mantra of the procrastinator. I could not tell you how many times I’ve said it myself, and each and everytime I knew it was a lie. There are twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week, surely somewhere in there I can find time to do everything that needs to be done. Yet over and over again I find that to not be the case.

Procrastination has definitely plagued me my entire life, but I had always felt certain that it would slide into the background as my academic career ended and my professional career began. But if anything the opposite is true. It isn’t a problem at work, it is true, but I seem to be perpetually out of hours when I’m off the clock.

I think at the root of the whole thing, the node(0) as Brad might want to call it, is that I am perpetually grossly underestimating the time and effort involved in things. I either think it will be far easier than it is, or simply believe that I can soldier through it by foregoing trivialities like sleep and food. I pile expectations onto my plate like so many mashed potatoes and I end up disappointing myself.

Apparently this problem is not uncommon, and is even believed to be genetic. That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Everyone knows someone who is always late, always scrambling. I don’t think I am beyond hope. I have accomplished too many things to view the situation as intractible. It is just something that I will always need to be concious of. I have never bought the excuse of “that’s just the way I am.” I think the second you are cognizant of something the responsibility lies entirely with you. Shrugging and blaming your DNA for your problems solves absolutely nothing, and frankly I am more concerned with finding a solution than a scape goat.

My approach so far has been to be more careful about monitoring how long things actually take. My ability to estimate what time it is fairly accurate it seems, it is just my guesses at how long I actually spend doing things that is off. By noting the start and end time when I perform an activity some simple arithmetic solves that problem for me. This works great for things like getting to work on time, where I repeat a set of activities quite often. It doesn’t work so hot on things I’ve never attempted before, like a game contest.

So, it appears my only hope is experience. I will keep doing things. Eventually, I will have done enough of what I need to do that I will already know how long it takes me to do it. I think perhaps this is true more often than people admit. I find that people tend to downplay their previous failures in light of more recent success, so it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that everyone does everything right the first time except you. Perhaps instead of working so hard to improve myself, I just need to lie more?