Procastination

All of my life as a student, I have had an issue with something we all know as procrastination. I feel like I put off almost everything in school until the last moment possible. I feel that by putting doing an assignment off, I am hurting myself by making myself more stressed out over it. Stressed not only when I have to actually do the assignment or project, but by putting it off, the thought that I will have to do the project at some point in the near future is always in the back of my mind. I feel that if I were to do things when I receive the assignment and not wait until right before I have to turn things in, that would make my life less stressful. Not to mention, whatever it is that I am doing would be a higher quality.

I think learning to use my time more effectively and do things when I get the assignment and not put it off would be very beneficial for my future. In this blog assignment, I think I would be better off writing the blogs before the Sunday that I have to write them. Every week, I put off writing the blog until Sunday, and then on Sunday, I spend a while thinking of a life lesson that I could put into my blog. While it has worked well enough so far, I think that I would be better off finishing the assignment before Sunday and then on Sunday, I would not even have to think about my blog or writing it. I think I will try to do that this next upcoming week’s blog post.
Last year, when I was in Mr Mitchell’s AP U.S. History class, he would assign us to make around 100-150 flash cards over miscellaneous things that have happened or people in history. They would take a few hours to make if you did it in one sitting, I would know. I did it many times. However, towards the end of the year, I began working on the cards about two weeks or so before they were do. That way, I could spend about 10-15 minutes working on them a day, and then I would not have to work on them the last day. I think also working in the little shifts made my work more effective. When I would do them in one sitting, I would get bored and distracted and I would finish less in 15 minutes than I would if I were to only work for a 15 minute increment.
Anyway, now more than ever, I think it would be beneficial for me to learn to not put things off and to complete projects or assignments in a timely manner. Considering that we are all going to be leaving high school in the very near future and that many of us will be going to college I think we all could learn to be more efficient with our time.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

There is a saying which says that the grass is always greener on the the other side of the fence. It is emphasizing the idea that we like to think that if we were in some different circumstance or situation that we would be happier than we are now in our current situation. I was thinking about this saying, and I agree that we do think this. But why? In essence, we are postponing our happiness to some future date when we can just simply be happy now. I think what happens is we become jealous of what other people have and their situation. 

In college readiness, we watched a video called Happy, it was about people and how they find happiness. It was really interesting and I found it weird how scientific happiness really is. The gist of the story was basically this: we are ultimately in charge of how happy we are. Basically, it said that, to be happy, all you really need to do is spend time with family and do things that you love to do. It talks about something called “flow”. Flow is basically when you are so focused in something that you enjoy that you are completely content. Usually things involving flow are hobbies or sports. They are activities that you can do almost anywhere. One person experience flow when they had dinner with their family every week. Spending time with other people is good and allows us to experience flow. 

One thing that I like about the video was a little fun fact it had in it. It said that the difference between happiness of someone that makes $5,000 dollars a year and someone that makes $50,000 is great, but the difference in happiness between someone who makes $50,000 and someone who makes $50,000,000 is pretty much negligible. This proves that money does buy happiness, but only to an extent. People always feel that if they had more money they would be happier, but this fact shows that we can be very happy even if we aren’t rich. Most of the activities that allow us to experience flow are not expensive at all.

Another thing that the video pointed out was that we have become a very competitive society. We compete in sports. We compete with other people. The video said that we are a lot happier when we work together with other people rather than when we compete against them. 

So, in conclusion, we should all choose to be happy now and not wait for some future circumstance that might not even come to be. Why wait? The grass is not always greener on the other side. Being super rich, does not make you happier. Being happy is pretty simple and doesn’t need to be complicated or hard to do. We do not need to compete with each other or be jealous because of what some other person has.