The Library is Awesome
Ok, so I'm a huge procrastinator. Well, I'm not that huge, but you get the idea. And I've looked up a lot on procrastination. (While procrastinating... you'll know what I'm talking about if you do it. ^.^) And it's all bull. I'm sorry, but Nothing out there is useful. It's all crap like "Eat that frog." You ever hear that crap? Such bad advice. Not only is it Not What You Should Do, the idea is "If you aren't very good at doing work, what you should really do is Do the Hardest Work Possible." Yeah thanks, that makes So Much Sense. But, I have found something that works for me, and I'm so excited I wanted to share. (Emphasis on For Me, everyone is different!) And it's not complicated or based on Brain Science or some expert or hard or anything like that. You know what it is?
Go to the freaking library. The library is the bomb. When I go to the library, it's impossible for me to procrastinate, and I'm like 10X more productive. I'll go into more detail about why I think it works, but basically, having a sacred place that is Only For Work really helps me, not because it's quiet or distraction-free like any productivity blog will have you think.
You know Parkinson's law? It states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." I'm a real slave to it. You know, when most people procrastinate, they do fun stuff instead of what they should be doing because reason-be-damned, right? I have it way worse. At least if I did that, I'd have a lot of music-playing and drawing and movie-watching down. But no. When I procrastinate, Reasonable Me goes, "you should do your work. Sit down and do your work." And so I sit down and try to do my work. And get distracted with Really Stupid Boring Stuff! Like looking up weird facts, Wikipedia, and Reddit. (Yeah normally I link everything but I'll save it this time, for the sake of all you who are similar to me.) Even shutting off my internet doesn't help 'cause I find something even stupider and even more boring to do! Instead of work. And then the work rolls around and I cram to do it. (Or don't even do it.)
So at the end of last year, I hadn't done basically any of my English work. My teacher, though, (bless her heart but not actually), let me do it late for half credit. So I needed to find a way to cram. And one thing I tried was going to the library, and boy did that work.
The thing about the library for me, is that when I'm at the library for work, I'm At the Library for Work. Something about that allows my brain to switch into work mode, and not want to get distracted. It genuinely makes it easy for me to focus. I had always avoided it because the only argument that I'd heard for it is that it's quiet and distraction-free. (External distractions are fine for me, it's the internal that get me.) But this works for me because it's so self-contained. The other side-effect of this Work Mode, which I think is even more important, is that because of that, Parkinson's Law doesn't apply. Here I am at the library, doing Just Work, and I want to go home. So I'll do the work, until it's done, and then I can leave. And the best part of that is, when I get home, I'm really free! I can do what I want and not feel guilty! Because home time, is Free Time. The worst part of my old procrastination is that I'd fill my day with hours of Unfulfilling Free Time.
So, having boiled down why I think this works for me, I'm going to extrapolate a little. I think, if you can make a workplace that is a Work Place and if you Do Not desecrate it with free time, or idle procrastinatory time, then it will be self-perpetuating. This could work within your home. For me, I've yet to find a place I could do this, because I've desecrated everywhere with free time, but I feel that with sufficient free-time sanitization (organization, a knighting of a desk, maybe some fire) it could be possible.
Looking forward to seeing where this takes me, and I hope this helps anyone reading.