Category: Difficulty Paper

So for the article I read “Later” is a striking take on the perspectives of other people procrastinating. Although I tend to do this a lot, the only thing that I have to say is that compared to other people who may feel bad about doing work, I typically feel a natural feeling of laziness. What the writer did was basically give a bunch of stories that basically tie into the point of the entire idea that basically everyone procrastinates but through different ways. He also uses procrastination to try and reach out to the reader by specifying how we would feel and why we would try to procrastinate. He basically stated that we do this to avoid the feeling of having something to do such as for example if you are a student given a large amount of homework you would basically have this feeling of not wanting to do it or basically having to think of it so as a response they would try to avoid it without trying to do it or either they would avoid it then attempt to do it later. Personally, for me I can relate to a few points of this. There would be times that a teacher/professor would give a large assignment as homework and give us like a week to do it which is fine but at the same time kind of kills me since they aren’t really thinking about the other types of stuff the other teachers would give us which would stack right on top of the to do things that has to be done. It makes it harder to do what we need to and gives me more of a reason to procrastinate. 

Before reading the article “Later” my mind already went into thinking it would be an article about procrastination and how it’s bad and how to avoid. It’s more than that and it’s not easy seeing the point where the author is trying to talk about procrastination on how it can be bad but also used in a positive way. Like in the article he talked about a magazine editor he knew and one of their writer’s handed in a paper later on then they said they would.  After saying that story he closes with a lesson “So a fuller explanation of procrastination really needs to take account of our attitudes to the tasks being avoided.” I understood from that is procrastination comes along with each person’s attitude towards the task they are giving. The confusing part was when he used what he said to explain an example during the Civil war when General George McClellan led an Army during the early years of the war. Then says “ was one of the greatest procrastinators of all time. When he took charge of the Union army, McClellan was considered a military genius, but he soon became famous for his chronic hesitancy.” I didn’t comprehend how someone can be the one of the greatest procrastinators of all time when he told the story of a person heading a time sensitive paper in late and then saying procrastinations takes the account of our attitude of our task. From what I took from that was he was basically blaming procrastination. I would still have to reread to under it more to get  a better understanding.

The article “Later” by James Surowiecki talks an interesting story about procrastination and how it evolves with people. I found this article interesting and confusing. I found it interesting because he uses stories to make the story more appealing. For example in the first paragraph he talks about how it took his friend a long time to get his stuff to the states from india. And when he says about anyone going through things in life, “Many of us go through life with an array of undone tasks, large and
small, nibbling at our conscience”. Also how he uses procrastination with a certain word. That can relate to people on a daily or have a significant meaning to it. people procrastinate due to a lack of motivation or discipline. They feel like they have time to the task so they do it on the last second. Because they don’t find it interesting. Something i found confusing is how the article is structure because it talks about something then it switches to something else. For example when he was talking about General George McClellan. He says, “So a fuller explanation of procrastination really
needs to take account of our attitudes to the tasks being avoided”. But then talks about how those procrastination made him a great leader. “who led the Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War and was one of the greatest procrastinators of all time”. Something i can relate to is perfectionism because i like having everything to be perfect to be appealing to me. I feel like the purpose of the article was to help individuals that struggle with the purpose of the article was to help individuals that struggle with procrastination  and the problems is has. But i feel like this is something that everyone can relate to. Overall the article had important point about the purpose of the article was to help individuals that struggle with procrastination.