Strange but I don’t remember when I started to procrastinate. I bet is something between my college years and now, and believe me, college was hard. I had the freedom to chose my own classes, workshops, absences (up to 3 per class) and even my teachers.
After my first year, I had half of the day to do whatever I wanted with my free time, and that could be a factor to develop my procrastination.
Meanwhile, when I was a teenager, I didn’t have that kind of freedom so I was forced to stay with a daily routine and small douses of free time. But in reality, it wasn’t that bad; I remember when I was in middle school I achieved a lot of rare mounts in World of Warcraft, doing long and boring dungeons each week for the chance to get the mount I wanted.
One time, two times and so on…
I also made my first video game with no programing experience at all, only my desire to learn quickly so I can build an awesome game. By those times gaming engines weren’t that popular and they didn’t work like the way you wanted; So you had to do everything by yourself, coding and designing at the same time.
I still can’t believe I made an addictive game that not only my friends played it but also my dad when he returned home from work.
In high school, I started many business ideas during my free time.
First, a small hosting services, to host ‘OT servers’ for my friends and early clients using a VPS that I rented with my savings. I made almost $5,000 before I had to shut it down because I was underage and I didn’t know all the terms and rules I was breaking until my PayPal account was closed.
My second venture consisted in selling smartphones that my dad repaired at home, and I sold them to my friends in school and on the internet using Mercado Libre an ‘eBay’ alike website for my country.
Also a news site about gaming and technology, web design for friends, and people I contacted on MSN and other stuff.
During my teens, I pretty much could spend more than 13 hours straight working in something from the beginning to the end. I never had problems with school, I was that kid who always did his homework and even if I was tired or bored I forced myself to finish it without taking any breaks.
When I was a teen I finished things and I didn’t put too much attention in the final result, as long as I could finish my tasks at the end of the day.
I didn’t know the word ‘procrastination’ until I get into college. All the freedom in college, make me slack more often and I started to take ‘small breaks’ during college assignments.
And I still launched two products in college, I graduated with my generation and I even landed a job as an engineer straight from college.
I procrastinated a lot during college but deadlines, final exams, and teamwork with my classmates forced me to stay with a routine. And this kind of solution is what I’m trying to explain here, if you can’t find a solution to your procrastination then make a space in your routine to procrastinate.
Build a daily routine and each morning, make a pledge with yourself that you will accomplish it by the end of the day.
Same with work, college or anything you want on your life you have to put a lot of effort and be consistent.
And if you can’t stick to a daily routine, then find a group or convince a friend, your partner or your dog to share the same routine with you.
For example, in my case I’m using WIPChat which is a group of makers working on their projects, making daily updates and sharing their workload for the day.
Reading all the progress they are making during the day, motivate me to keep working on my own projects every day.
Nothing is more motivational that looking back a month ago, and see all the work done you have accomplished.
Please share this with all your Medium friends and hit that applause button below to spread it around even more.
Do you have any question or comment to add? Leave your comment below and I’ll answer it later! :)
