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No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

blog.seangransee.com

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#11
That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up.

tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and perks over working a job, nanananana.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#12
post #9

What classes are you in? The labs for my OS class seem to usually take on the order of 20 solid hours per week and my school requires at least 5 classes per semester.

Machine Learning and Databases (both graduate level courses), plus Physics (electrostatics and magnetism) and Differential Equations.

My school has three trimesters instead of two semesters, so we have 3 terms of 4 classes each.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#13

That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up. tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and…

I'm currently working for two startups and a research lab. My day is just the reverse of yours. Most of my evening/nights are spent doing work for my jobs.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#14

Clocks vs alarms is a new insight. During hour-scale procrastination, I do check the clock often. An alarm near the deadline, instead of clock-checking, could force me to start the task immediately because of uncertainty. I'll try it right now. EDIT: I just tried it. Unable to check a clock, I felt a real urgency to get things done. Very interesting idea.

Even though that wasn't the main point of this post, that's probably the best part because it's super easy to follow and the benefits come immediately if it works for you.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#15

Are you actually able to get all of your work done by 5pm on a consistent basis? I really like the idea you're promoting (and I may well try it myself), but that seems like a stretch for me. Between 2.5-3.5 hours of class a day, lunch, and the time it takes to go from class to another etc, that would really only leave me 2-3 hours for work every day...I honestly don't think that would be enough even if I could focus…

I'm guessing OP is a lot smarter than me, because I need a lot more time than that to barely understand any of my coursework.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#16

That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up. tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and…

It's 11:14 pm my time, and I just got done with work. Legitimate, not-procrastinating, i-work-in-the-startup-salt-mines, since I began this morning...work.

I'm now faced with either getting a little more sleep, getting to read a book series I started recently, trying to get some of my russian studies done, or maybe actually learning something about programming today.

I think I developed more as a person when I was working a 9-5. I never even got to experience the freedom of academics, because I couldn't afford to go to college.

Fuck it, I'll read another article about monad transformers and then pass out.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#18
For me, productivity changes on a day by day basis. There are days when I'm able to stay focused and work from 8am to midnight, taking a half-hour lunch break and a 5 minute break every 3 hours and I actually get a lot done in that time. On other days I work for hours on end on the same thing and won't get it done because I keep procrastinating, checking HN, reddit, whatever.

I think it's a lot about being motivated and excited about what you do. If it feels really interesting, the work is basically doing itself. If I've got other things on my mind (which I have lately), everything feels like a chore. Still have to do it though. The same even applies to my personal projects to a lesser degree.

Re: No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass

#20

That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up. tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and…

I'm a student, with afternoon and evening classes. I don't have these freedom and perks. If anything, I look forward to getting a job so I can stop worrying about studying for a test.
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