The Non-Procrastination Guild! (huzzah for productivity!)

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

The curtains open on a dark stage. A spotlight shines out of the darkness, resting on a girl with a black hoodie, gray sweats, and a ridiculously out of place top hat and cane. She stands in the silence for a moments, then lifts her head and speaks.

"Welcome one, welcome all, to the Non-Procrastination Guild!  The place where we actually do our homework, continue writing our books, and don't put off all those projects we've been meaning to do. 

"Instead of talking about what we haven't yet done, we will speak of the things we have accomplished! We will finally write those essays, stop getting distracted, and turn in our homework on time! 

"And so, my fellow Sharders, I ask you:

"What have you accomplished today? The stage is now yours."

The girl retreats into the darkness.

[Lord Spirit he/him]

*Awkward Silence*

 

 

*Cricket chirps*

 

 

*muffled cough*

Spoiler

Actually, I'm caught up in my schoolwork for the first time in a while.

 

[Duxredux he/him]

Well, it says something that I'm responding to this rather than working on my 5-page essay due tomorrow. See: getting distracted, failing to do my homework, and putting off a project.

Here are my 2 cents to try make me spending time here actually productive, rather than a continuation of getting distracted and putting off my homework projects. I do think it is possible that going onto 17th Shard can genuinely make someone more productive, but only within the framework of other practices. 17th Shard as a fan forum for entertainment, socialization, and with its own writing corner is not something that screams "I will be more productive by going to this website", and usually the opposite. So how do we make it productive?  I don't want to take over your thread @Through The Living Glass and dictate a structure, so feel free to ask me to tweak my post so that it better fits the vision of what you hope it can accomplish.

• First suggestion is to not make this solely a bragging thread for all the productive people to boast about their awesome accomplishments while the procrastinators feel even guiltier by looking at what everyone else is achieving. Perhaps use a format where whenever someone accomplishes something to try to post the next task/milestone/etc. that they want to achieve? Sometimes it may be fine to post updates and not only completion of tasks, like "I finished the rough draft of my essay, now I just need to read over the copyediting notes my family gave me and rewrite it before tomorrow".
•  Don't compare. Everyone has different skills where some tasks are easier than others. I've known someone who was an amazing organizers and could manage a super complicated shift roster but for whatever reason couldn't clean their room. It's fine to post "I cleaned my room, and for me that's a major accomplishment" right next to "I just recarpeted my room and painted the walls".  Don't diminish your own accomplishment just because it feels small next to what someone else did, the direction you are moving is the important part.
• 17th Shard as a social forum can potentially provide some accountability. If you feel like it would help you personally, ask for something like "I have an essay due tomorrow, if you see me posting random YKYASFW memes in an hour, tag me here and call me out please?" or "I need to write 2000 words a day if I want to finish this before summer. Can someone ask me for updates?" That said, people might get busy doing other things like their own projects, so we may have to see how effective asking for accountability actually is.
• Last bit of advice, is that it is totally fine to take breaks, but I think there's a big difference between taking a break, and avoiding work. Some tasks are just hard mentally, physically, and/or emotionally and can take a lot out of you. Stopping for 15 minutes or so to decompress can help you get back to the main task with more energy. If 17th Shard is a place where that works for you, awesome. However, if that 15 minute break stretches to hours, then it's a problem. Sometimes simply mentally giving myself permission to take a break, setting a timer, and then doing something fun for a while knowing that I will get back to work can be the difference between feeling like a guilty procrastinator and a productive person simply taking a break. Sometimes taking a break from artificial intelligence to write an essay on Realmatic Theory really does help the brain unwind, not really sure why. Guilt is an exhausting motivator, and it's hard to feel accomplishment if it's the primary driver since it often feels more like "finally, it's over" rather than "Yes, I did it!", so for me at least, trying to minimize the guilt of procrastination is a huge step in getting the actual energy to do the stuff that needs to be done.
  • If the task in front of you feels monumentally big and unbearable to look at, then consider the Pomodoro technique of breaking down your task into smaller chunks of time. Other people have explained it better than me, such as here, but if you can't remember Pomodoro, just look up "tomato clock method"

 

And so, today my first accomplishment is that I wrote an unsolicited essay on productivity. What I intend to do next is apply said essay and get myself to write my actual essay on supply chain management productivity due tomorrow night. Feel free to ask me Friday afternoon how it's coming or if I'm done Saturday morning. If you see me posting elsewhere today or tomorrow, feel free to call me out and see if I'm just procrastinating or if I've actually got something done and I'm just taking a break.

Edited April 18 by Duxredux

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

5 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Well, it says something that I'm responding to this rather than working on my 5-page essay due tomorrow. See: getting distracted, failing to do my homework, and putting off a project.

Here are my 2 cents to try make me spending time here actually productive, rather than a continuation of getting distracted and putting off my homework projects. I do think it is possible that going onto 17th Shard can genuinely make someone more productive, but only within the framework of other practices. 17th Shard as a fan forum for entertainment, socialization, and with its own writing corner is not something that screams "I will be more productive by going to this website", and usually the opposite. So how do we make it productive?  I don't want to take over your thread @Through The Living Glass and dictate a structure, so feel free to ask me to tweak my post so that it better fits the vision of what you hope it can accomplish.

• First suggestion is to not make this solely a bragging thread for all the productive people to boast about their awesome accomplishments while the procrastinators feel even guiltier by looking at what everyone else is achieving. Perhaps use a format where whenever someone accomplishes something to try to post the next task/milestone/etc. that they want to achieve? Sometimes it may be fine to post updates and not only completion of tasks, like "I finished the rough draft of my essay, now I just need to read over the copyediting notes my family gave me and rewrite it before tomorrow".
•  Don't compare. Everyone has different skills where some tasks are easier than others. I've known someone who was an amazing organizers and could manage a super complicated shift roster but for whatever reason couldn't clean their room. It's fine to post "I cleaned my room, and for me that's a major accomplishment" right next to "I just recarpeted my room and painted the walls".  Don't diminish your own accomplishment just because it feels small next to what someone else did, the direction you are moving is the important part.
• 17th Shard as a social forum can potentially provide some accountability. If you feel like it would help you personally, ask for something like "I have an essay due tomorrow, if you see me posting random YKYASFW memes in an hour, tag me here and call me out please?" or "I need to write 2000 words a day if I want to finish this before summer. Can someone ask me for updates?" That said, people might get busy doing other things like their own projects, so we may have to see how effective asking for accountability actually is.
• Last bit of advice, is that it is totally fine to take breaks, but I think there's a big difference between taking a break, and avoiding work. Some tasks are just hard mentally, physically, and/or emotionally and can take a lot out of you. Stopping for 15 minutes or so to decompress can help you get back to the main task with more energy. If 17th Shard is a place where that works for you, awesome. However, if that 15 minute break stretches to hours, then it's a problem. Sometimes simply mentally giving myself permission to take a break, setting a timer, and then doing something fun for a while knowing that I will get back to work can be the difference between feeling like a guilty procrastinator and a productive person simply taking a break. Sometimes taking a break from artificial intelligence to write an essay on Realmatic Theory really does help the brain unwind, not really sure why. Guilt is an exhausting motivator, and it's hard to feel accomplishment if it's the primary driver since it often feels more like "finally, it's over" rather than "Yes, I did it!", so for me at least, trying to minimize the guilt of procrastination is a huge step in getting the actual energy to do the stuff that needs to be done.
  • If the task in front of you feels monumentally big and unbearable to look at, then consider the Pomodoro technique of breaking down your task into smaller chunks of time. Other people have explained it better than me, such as here, but if you can't remember Pomodoro, just look up "tomato clock method"

 

And so, today my first accomplishment is that I wrote an unsolicited essay on productivity. What I intend to do next is apply said essay and get myself to write my actual essay on supply chain management productivity due tomorrow night. Feel free to ask me Friday afternoon how it's coming or if I'm done Saturday morning. If you see me posting elsewhere today or tomorrow, feel free to call me out and see if I'm just procrastinating or if I've actually got something done and I'm just taking a break.

Actually, I'm glad you wrote that. Thank you. These are all really good points, and I never intended this to be a way to put other people down. I have a seriously hard focusing and getting things done, and so whenever I finish homework or a project on time, I feel really proud of myself. That's pretty much what this thread is meant to be; people can talk about the things that they accomplished and are proud of! I agree, obviously people shouldn't just post about how great they are, and I like the idea of posting what they're going to do next, but they shouldn't be prideful or boastful. Having a goal in mind, telling other people about it, and having them check in also seems like a great way to keep on track. I'd never heard of the Pomodoro method, but now that I've looked it up I think I'll give it a try!

There definitely is a difference between taking breaks and avoiding work, but I also think that getting distracted is something else. Obviously getting distracted can be an accident, but once you realize you are distracted, if you keep doing that thing, then you're just avoiding work. It IS, however, important to take breaks.

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one, @Duxredux. Thank you so much for writing that!

On that note, I've completed all of my previous Chemistry homework, but I'll have more later today. If someone wants to check in with me tomorrow afternoon to see if I've done it, that would be great!

[Duxredux he/him]

1 hour ago, Through The Living Glass said:

On that note, I've completed all of my previous Chemistry homework, but I'll have more later today. If someone wants to check in with me tomorrow afternoon to see if I've done it, that would be great!

Huzzah! 

1 hour ago, Through The Living Glass said:

Actually, I'm glad you wrote that. Thank you. These are all really good points, and I never intended this to be a way to put other people down. I have a seriously hard focusing and getting things done, and so whenever I finish homework or a project on time, I feel really proud of myself. That's pretty much what this thread is meant to be; people can talk about the things that they accomplished and are proud of! I agree, obviously people shouldn't just post about how great they are, and I like the idea of posting what they're going to do next, but they shouldn't be prideful or boastful. Having a goal in mind, telling other people about it, and having them check in also seems like a great way to keep on track. I'd never heard of the Pomodoro method, but now that I've looked it up I think I'll give it a try!

There definitely is a difference between taking breaks and avoiding work, but I also think that getting distracted is something else. Obviously getting distracted can be an accident, but once you realize you are distracted, if you keep doing that thing, then you're just avoiding work. It IS, however, important to take breaks.

I think you hit the nail on the head with this one, @Duxredux. Thank you so much for writing that!

Glad that my distractibility was helpful this time! As a fellow procrastinator with terrible focus, I'm similarly a work-in-progress trying to get better at self-management. If other people have cool strategies that have worked for them, I certainly won't turn them down.

My follow up report is that I rewrote my 5 page essay and I'm on my second draft. I'll be handing it to my family to read and make comments before I do last tweaks and submit it tomorrow. I can't promise that I'll always be around on this thread for accountability, but I might pop in every so often. 17th Shard definitely is a big time sink for me, and I'm trying to be mindful of how I manage myself.

[Just-A-Stick she/her]

I did all my history work for today, the whole weekend, and Monday!  

[WhyEverNot_8 he/him]

I can’t be here right now

bye guys

[Xaladin he/him]

I don’t imagine this thread being anything but doomed. For, you know, reasons.

[WhyEverNot_8 he/him]

I finished all my homework!

I’m finally done until tomorrow.

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

3 hours ago, Xaladin said:

I don’t imagine this thread being anything but doomed. For, you know, reasons.

Fair enough.

I finished a section of my art project! Now I just need to finish it before Friday...

Hey, @Duxredux, how'd that essay turn out?

[Duxredux he/him]

6 hours ago, Through The Living Glass said:

Fair enough.

I finished a section of my art project! Now I just need to finish it before Friday...

Hey, @Duxredux, how'd that essay turn out?

Got it completed and turned in. My next project was writing the code for a recurrent neural network to analyze HVAC data and make temperature recommendations. That one was a headache and I've been working on it alone for two days, but I'll be graded on quality of work and thought process, not completion. That was due yesterday and I submitted it. My next project today is fix the family bicycles and study for my final exams on Thursday and Friday, which thankfully I don't have to stress about. If I did my math right, I'll still pass even if I only get 50% on them. 

9 hours ago, Xaladin said:

I don’t imagine this thread being anything but doomed. For, you know, reasons.

Oh perhaps, but even procrastinators can eventually get things done. Despite being a rather consistent procrastinator, I'm about to get my Bachelor's degree. Sure, I'm getting it 5-8 years after the rest of my high school class, but I'm still getting it (COVID put some huge detours in my planned route). In my case, my degree is in a field that wasn't even taught 5 years ago and my college still hasn't updated some of their webpages to acknowledge that it's a field of study. Not every time, but sometimes taking the long scenic route still can have things work out, since I wouldn't have been able to even study what I ended up studying.

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

6 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Oh perhaps, but even procrastinators can eventually get things done. Despite being a rather consistent procrastinator, I'm about to get my Bachelor's degree. Sure, I'm getting it 5-8 years after the rest of my high school class, but I'm still getting it (COVID put some huge detours in my planned route). In my case, my degree is in a field that wasn't even taught 5 years ago and my college still hasn't updated some of their webpages to acknowledge that it's a field of study. Not every time, but sometimes taking the long scenic route still can have things work out, since I wouldn't have been able to even study what I ended up studying.

Yo, congrats!

[WhyEverNot_8 he/him]

6 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Oh perhaps, but even procrastinators can eventually get things done. Despite being a rather consistent procrastinator, I'm about to get my Bachelor's degree. Sure, I'm getting it 5-8 years after the rest of my high school class, but I'm still getting it (COVID put some huge detours in my planned route). In my case, my degree is in a field that wasn't even taught 5 years ago and my college still hasn't updated some of their webpages to acknowledge that it's a field of study. Not every time, but sometimes taking the long scenic route still can have things work out, since I wouldn't have been able to even study what I ended up studying.

Massive Congratulations!!!

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

What's yall's secrets to productivity. Are you spiking people?

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

25 minutes ago, Lego Mistborn said:

What's yall's secrets to productivity. Are you spiking people?

I think it's benson Boone music.

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

1 hour ago, Lego Mistborn said:

What's yall's secrets to productivity. Are you spiking people?

 

45 minutes ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

I think it's benson Boone music.

Actually it's both. 

Nah, fr though, I just do my best to focus. Which is hard. So things that should take 30 minutes take and hour instead because ADHD is so fun. Unless I'm drawing; that actually is super duper fun.

[strmblsd he/him. (You lost the game)]

ok I need to be here I need to work...

[Through The Living Glass She/Her]

1 hour ago, strmblsd said:

ok I need to be here I need to work...

You got this!