Category: Unit 1.5: Difficulty Paper – “Later” (Page 8 of 20)

From re-reading “Later” i’ve learned their’s way more to this story then I thought their was. At first I strongly did not like “Later” because it was repetitive and I feel like the author was over elaborating. Since re-reading I’ve come to the fact that procrastination is just more then you postponing or delaying something in particular. Procrastination can be a personal trait or even being a reason you procrastinate because of what your environment is like. Sometimes as a person, procrastinating can have other factors that play apart like “The planning fallacy”. Scientist Jon Elster stated that people underestimate time on how long things will actually take because they fail to take account that basically there will be some type of problem or delay most of the time. He’s  basically saying all the time you plan on doing something , we mostly think every thing will be done smoothly. But we don’t think about all the wrongs that can happen. I can agree with this statement because I actually feel this way almost everyday. I really relate to this because I drive a lot.  My first thoughts when I know I have to go somewhere is how long will it take me to get to my destination. I look at the Waze app to know how long it takes me to get from point A to point B. It calculates how much time it takes but like the rest of us you can’t predict a car crash or somebody’s car just breaking down and being stuck on a highway.I believe this is another way of procrastination but in a way we can’t control but can at the same time. If you would just leave earlier you wouldn’t have this problem, but you can’t always predict what happens. Even the author talks about how while he was writing “Later” he had many unanticipated trips or delays that he could not have predicted.  So this procrastinated him from making “Later ” and releasing his work earlier.

Some might argue that procrastination isn’t really a big deal, however, it hasn’t been highlighted until recently. After re-reading “Later”, it has helped me better understand the story that conveys “procrastination might be more than just a bad habit” as stated by the author. The evidence provided a lot of insight not just from important figures who are victims of this habit but also from what could potentially be the reason why it affects most of us, that’s why it’s considered to be a “quintessential modern problem” that philosophers, as well as psychologists, weighed in. Interestingly enough, this problem existed way before the 19^th century and since then it has affected more and more people in similar circumstances of having “short-term goals overwhelming long-term ones” as stated in the text. In addition, procrastination may be that it has something to do with internal feelings that prevent us from completing the task at that moment and having a short and simple thought of putting it down for a later time setting us unforeseeable issues or plans. Some solutions to combat it might vary from person to person, however, if we view it through experience it takes us to put a limit or a consequence to not go beyond procrastination, for instance the experiment that was conducted by a psychologist at M.I.T of students setting due dates for the paper so that the students wouldn’t feel so unhappy when there are delays (especially if their grade would be docked if not submitted by the end of the semester). Therefore, procrastination is just seen as an excuse for us to skip the hard task that those minded voices ask, “Is it worth it doing?” Eventually, it becomes an instinct.

Ater reading and annotating “Later,” I realized that it was a very boring text. I felt like it was elongated when it wasn’t necessary. it was surprising that I was only 11 pages because it felt like 20.I feel like there was too many examples for one point like the examples should have been distributed to different ideas but there were all just talking about how procrastination affects people. like talking about how 70 percent of people suffering from glaucoma risk, Americans wasting money because they don’t file their taxes on time, how it inflicts major cost on business and governments, how major procrastination in college students, etc. I think 2 examples would have been fine. I also noticed that James Surowiek vocabulary was kind of hard to understand.  some words I didn’t understand were like bureaucracy, vagaries and more that I had to research and that’s just on the first page. I keep taking breaks while reading “later” because I was so bored and needed to be mentally ready to read the next part, I felt like I kept reading the same thing over and over again. James’s tone was also boring, and I wish he could have organized the format better. At the same time though I think it was sone purposely because what I read stuck with me and as much as I was bored by it, I remember it. James’s purpose of writing this article is probably to show how important procrastination is and to avoid it and do what you must do.