My resolution for 1/1/13 is going to be to stop procrastinating. That's not a typo, it might work better to plan ahead for an early start next year. Besides, setting a deadline works, according to Dan Ariely, a teacher who devised a scheme to pull on his students. See The Magic of Procrastination.
He told them at the beginning of the course that they would be required to submit three papers before the end of the course, but each student must set the deadline for his/her papers, and a missed deadline would result in a penalized grade. Excerpt:
Now a perfectly rational student would set all the deadlines for the last day of class—after all, they could submit papers early ... If the students were not rational and knew it, then they might set early deadlines and by doing so force themselves to start working on the projects earlier in the semester.
Interestingly, we found that the majority of students committed to earlier deadlines, and that this ability to commit resulted in higher grades. More generally, it seems that simply offering students a tool by which they could pre-commit publically to deadlines can help them achieve their goals.
Well, OK. That's one way to get 'er done.
Here's another one from a philosopher named John Perry. He explains this very simple theory in How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done. Make a long to-do list with the most important things at the top. Doing the things farther down on the list is a form of procrastinating. But those lesser things get done, thus achieving something through procrastination. That idea won an IgNoble prize which provided the following summary.
To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.
So if you are a procrastinator, relax. Simply make a list, but first, set a deadline for making that list.
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