Too Much Time, Too Little To Do

Too much time, too little to do.

You heard me right.  I have an excess of time and not enough to do.  You’re probably thinking I’m nuts, if you didn’t already hold that opinion.  That is, however, the dilemma I find myself in on a day-by-day basis while at school.  And it is, indeed, a dilemma.  See, the problem is not explicitly the amount of time or work I have to do, it’s the fact that, despite this “extra” time I have, I still do not get my work done until the night before, or even mere hours and minutes before the work is due.  Why is this?  I have too much time and not enough work to fill that time.

You see, when I have many large assignments and a test all due on one day, I know that I must start working on things ahead of time in order to get everything done on time and to the best of my abilities.  I may still procrastinate, but instead of having nothing started, I’ll at least have many little pieces of each assignment that I simply have to put together.  However, when I have just one or two assignments, or maybe a reading or quiz, I know that I can leave small things like that until the night before or the morning of and still get them done with plenty of time.  The problem is, because I know this, I leave things off longer and longer all the time, and it’s getting to the point where I actually AM getting crunched for time.  Not only is it inconvenient because it pushes other projects and things I’d like to do back, but it causes me a lot of unneeded stress which, as some of you may know, I already have a tough enough time dealing with.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a typical 24-hour period, starting after my last class of one day: check Facebook, email, Twitter, etc. until dinner.  Go get dinner and watch YouTube videos while I eat it.  Get caught up on YouTube and watch videos for at least a half hour longer than I need to.  Re-check Facebook, etc.  Notice it’s 2100 or 2200 and I try to get to bed by 2300, so I should probably stop putting off my homework.  Homework inevitably takes at least an hour or more, putting me behind on sleep.  Get up in the morning and go to class.  Eat lunch and watch YouTube videos during my break from 1200-1530.  Lather, rinse, and repeat. 

And people complain about being busy all the time…

© 2007-2011 Jacob Tauer
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