The Now Habit

Byrichard

At the moment quite a few of the podcasts I listen to have been speaking about audiobooks and how practical they are for people who communicate and I decided that I would try this out for myself. Since I am not always the most effective person at getting things done I decided that I would get The Now habit.


The book, written by Neil A. Fiore takes a look at how we spend our time and how to avoid procrastinating as much as we do. It takes a look at a number of situations from corporate environment, through physical sports and activities to arrive at the dissertation writing student and how goo they are at wasting time.


Having listened to almost the entire book he has mentioned some elements that I found I have been applying to my life before reading the book, mainly doing just a few minutes at a time for bigger projects rather than forcing myself to do several hours in one go. This was particularly useful when working on the dissertation.


You know what it’s like. You’ve got a report to write and you feel that you should do it all at once but this is not the right mentality because the task is too daunting to do, which results in procrastination. There are a number of tasks he recommends including the unschedule, giving yourself a time limit as to how much time to spend on a project per week. He also recommends to play hard. All of these things are common sense but through case studies you may find solutions that may help you with challenges that are affecting you.


He has made some interesting remarks on university students and how those who do their dissertation in one year rather than two or three do better because as well as setting time aside each day to work on their dissertations they also take the time to enjoy themselves and relax.


From what I’ve read so far this is a good book, helping understand that there is no need to spend all your time on a task and that projects can be worked on in stages over a longer period of time than you may originally assume. Thinking of such things can help improve your quality of life and help make your life more bearable.

| |

Why It’s Great To Be A Student

Byrichard

One of the best things about being a student is that you can work on projects without having to feel bad about not making any money. In particular, I’m thinking of the dissertation. It’s a point where you’ve got ten thousand words to write about subjects you love.

As you’ve got to do so much research you’ve got a reason to buy tens of books and DVDs and watch them, enjoying every minute and taking the occasional note.

As you progress and you start writing you’re there, being your own boss. You develop your structure and you see what you’ve achieved. You think about what is already said and what else must be written. You write it down, re-write it. You find there’s some information missing so you’ve got an excuse to get sidetrack to look for some in-depth material about that.

You come back to the original text and you’ve just added 200 words. paf. Done, great. My project has progressed ;).

Of course, the more time you give yourself the more fun the project will be. If you give yourself ten weeks then you’ve got lots of time so it’ll be lots of fun because you can sidetrack all the time. if you’ve got 6 weeks you’re under pressure but not quite in the same way. If you’ve got four weeks you may have to be very disciplined. If you’ve got two weeks then forget about sleep, about friends, about sunshine and everything else. You’ve got to plod along and distractions will destroy your chances.

Anyway, I want to get the writing part done by the beginning of April so that I have four weeks to edit. Editing can be quite amusing when you’ve got time.

Enough procrastinating, time to go back for five minutes before the next distraction comes along