I have been a hardcore procrastinator since as long I can remember. Recently, I have been doing some introspection.

I have never been someone who can write a 5 page essay. From now on I’ll be posting my small bits of thoughts even it’s a disorganized mess.

Disclaimer: All of following is my thoughts inspired by this post.

What’s procrastination:
It’s a process where you do very unproductive work you don’t want to do when you really have a lot of work to do.

The reason behind procrastination:
What I think is when the brain perceives a task to be too easy or too tough, it starts escaping from it even it means more damage. I don’t know why it’s like that, probably we want to do doable tasks and ignore the rest.

Example me:
Ever since, I wasn’t academically the best student. I always used to go to my computer and do anything other than studying. I have procrastinated by perceiving it as too easy or too tough (I can recollect both instances). Probably, procrastination might be the reason why I have a little bit of expertise in computers. If we go to an alternate reality where I didn’t have to study and do whatever I want, I might’ve not had this “expertise”. So, this might be the one of the advantage of education system where you are fed with random facts that “might interest you”.

Until now, I have never been able to read a big novels because my brain perceives that it’s too difficult. But here’s the weird thing, I could listen to all the Harry Potter audiobooks on my iPod (BTW, Random House has this great audiobook). There is no medium to “perceive” the depth, it’s just a tiny little iPod. Similarly, I can read countless blog posts, twitter, hacker news, all day long on my iPad. Again, I can’t see the depth. As steve jobs said himself said, its just 10 mm thick. The amount of text I read might add up hundreds of those “big (purportedly awesome) books” I have not been able to read.

When was my “Eureka” moment:
Currently, I’m to study for final semester exams. During study holidays, I have been working on my side project even if I have to study loads of portions. I had been procrastinating these side projects when I had nothing to do during semester, wasting time on Facebook, Reddit etc. Now that I think of it, 800 million people’s procrastinating nature fuels Facebook’s billion dollar company.

The solution?
I haven’t able to measure the result, yet but here’s my agenda:

• Taking inspiration from the “Big Novel” example, I’m going to split all the tasks to tiny micro tasks. Writing down, “complete the big project you’ve been planning to do” on your checklist is probably not the best way of actually doing it.
• Thinking that it’s a small task. You might see in that in the beginning of the essay, I thought it would be a 2 para essay but turns out its bigger than what I thought it would be. Finally, you reading this is a proof that this works.
• Add a little obstruction to your distractions. For me, turning off the Wifi works.
• A bit of confidence might help? Looking back, I’ve never had the confidence. This time it might change.

So, there it is, I’m going use these brain gaming techniques to my study schedule and will let you know the results.