The last time I had a job, I spent most of my time “not working” and feeling guilty about it. I decided to solve the problem by leaving the job, and I’ve been job-free since September 2006.
For some reason, I almost never end up regretting putting things off or simply choosing not to do them at all. Don’t want to do homework? There’s an easy solution to that problem. Drop the course!
(Advice to anyone reading that’s currently in college: take as few courses as possible each semester, so you have more time to focus on each one that you do take. Graduating in five or six years is just as good as graduating in four.)
As it turns out, the only reason I managed to get through college was that my parents were very determined to see me graduate and were willing to micromanage my life in order to make sure that I did. As far as I’m concerned, the only significant benefit I’ve gotten from not having dropped out of Rutgers after my sophomore year was continued financial support from my parents...
Anecdotal counter-advice: Taking fewer credits each semester was counter-productive for me. When I took 4 classes a semester, the homework and study was too spaced out. I can’t maintain a regular schedule, and end up procastinating more because I have more time available. This can go too far though. Taking 7 classes, including a thesis course, and working part-time was a recipe for disaster. There is a sweet-spot where the work is steady, but not overwhelming.
Graduating in five or six years is just as good as graduating in four.
Except when you consider tuition and the opportunity cost of not starting work earlier. At my school tuition was the same between 12 and 21 credits a semester, so my wife completing her degree in three years made us better off by at least $40,000.
I second your anecdotal account. I’ll procrastinate forever if I have little to do, and will become a zealous workaholic when I have endless work piled up. I call it hard-core mode.
I wonder to what extent this relates to Yvain’s post on Typical Psyche Fallacy?
“All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.”
Alternative advice, perhaps more useful to people not yet in college than to people already there: When choosing any sort of discretionary education, make sure you’re doing something that you find interesting enough that you want to do more of it rather than less, or useful enough to give you the same motivation by indirect means.
The last time I had a job, I spent most of my time “not working” and feeling guilty about it. I decided to solve the problem by leaving the job, and I’ve been job-free since September 2006.
For some reason, I almost never end up regretting putting things off or simply choosing not to do them at all. Don’t want to do homework? There’s an easy solution to that problem. Drop the course!
(Advice to anyone reading that’s currently in college: take as few courses as possible each semester, so you have more time to focus on each one that you do take. Graduating in five or six years is just as good as graduating in four.)
As it turns out, the only reason I managed to get through college was that my parents were very determined to see me graduate and were willing to micromanage my life in order to make sure that I did. As far as I’m concerned, the only significant benefit I’ve gotten from not having dropped out of Rutgers after my sophomore year was continued financial support from my parents...
Anecdotal counter-advice: Taking fewer credits each semester was counter-productive for me. When I took 4 classes a semester, the homework and study was too spaced out. I can’t maintain a regular schedule, and end up procastinating more because I have more time available. This can go too far though. Taking 7 classes, including a thesis course, and working part-time was a recipe for disaster. There is a sweet-spot where the work is steady, but not overwhelming.
Except when you consider tuition and the opportunity cost of not starting work earlier. At my school tuition was the same between 12 and 21 credits a semester, so my wife completing her degree in three years made us better off by at least $40,000.
I second your anecdotal account. I’ll procrastinate forever if I have little to do, and will become a zealous workaholic when I have endless work piled up. I call it hard-core mode.
I wonder to what extent this relates to Yvain’s post on Typical Psyche Fallacy?
Reminds me a lot of Structured Procrastination:
Quite a lot, which I plan to use to help inform my next post on akrasia.
Alternative advice, perhaps more useful to people not yet in college than to people already there: When choosing any sort of discretionary education, make sure you’re doing something that you find interesting enough that you want to do more of it rather than less, or useful enough to give you the same motivation by indirect means.