Overall, I think the article in itself was comprehensible with there of course being one point, if not a few, that had me at a standstill for some time. It’s around the 11th page that discusses how people are less likely to finish work that is vague, allowing you to think more critically rather than an assignment that is more descriptive and detailed. The exact quote itself by David Allen says “the vaguer the task, or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it.” What I don’t seem to understand is how something that does not have many details to it makes someone take more time to think of it. Though there is the chance I am completely misinterpreting that section to begin with, the whole concept of how an assignment is explained determines the likeliness of one to do it is absurd. In other words, it’s as if Allen’s way of looking at procrastination is solely based on a person’s understanding of their school or organization’s system in what they look for to be demonstrated and, therefore, the students are to stress that no matter how long, short, open-ended, and/or specific a set of instructions is, all of the work must be of the same caliber. Is this even something that you just can apply to anyone? Definitely not. It’d be best to just do whatever the description orders you to do rather than overthinking about it for hours straight in my opinion. If something was already explained a certain way, then it is very likely that it was supposed to be like that in the first place. Another thing is that you could literally ask the instructor questions about almost anything regarding the assignment.
Category: Difficulty Paper
Homework d.1
After reading through the text “Later” I can give my personal opinion and reply on the given to us question which is, what about that passage is  , boring or otherwise difficult to understand. If to be fully honest throughout reading the text I personally blurred out a lot and had to bring back my focus, maybe it’s because I am not the person interested in reading “research paper style” texts. I wouldn’t state that I found reading this text difficult, but it was sort of on and off for me. One of the examples could be last paragraph on page 10 “A few years ago, Dan Ariely, a psychologist at M.I.T., did a fascinating experiment examining one of the most basic external tools for dealing with procrastination: deadlines…” The whole idea of this passage could be described briefly as the sentence I provided but no, it went on to describing the details and background which was quite interesting but the amount of a little harder language and a bunch of information that could have been shorter, makes it more difficult and confusing rather than straight to the point. The overall my understanding of the passage was that James Surowiecki wanted to address the issue to us, his readers so we can compare ourselves and remember / bring up the moments where we put things off until later instead of doing them right away . – Julia K
HW d.2 (Difficulty Paper)
REREAD and ANNOTATE: “Later”
WRITE: Using your plan for re-reading as a guide, re-read (and annotate in a different color than the first time) “Later.” When you’re done, write another 300 words about what you learned from rereading. Again, be specific, quoting from the text! You don’t need to submit this as a post. Instead, follow the instructions below and include in your difficulty paper.
The difficulty paper is 3 parts:
1. 300 words on what you found difficult or confusing (HW d.1)
2. Plan for rereading, which you did today during class, and
3. 300-word reflection after rereading (the prompt above).
Remember the difficulty paper is worth 5% of your grade. You just have to turn all three parts in (by the start of our next meeting) to get those points. Please put all 3 parts together in one document and submit them as a google doc or PDF to the difficulty paper submission folder in the shared Google Drive folder.
