Some Words

I have, over the past couple of weeks, come to realize how much time I lose to “catching up” with where I think I should be. Something about the process of doing something you already think should be done (answering email, listening to those old podcasts, reading those articles you bookmarked) takes longer. I think that people already have a hard time estimating how long a task will take, but I would like to propose a new rule. I don’t have a set ratio yet, but catch up tasks seem to take something like 1.25 times the amount of time they would have taken if I’d just done them first things first. Maybe this is just me realizing all the wasted time I’ve left sitting on the side of the internet’s yellow brick road. But over the past couple of weeks I’ve caught up on a lot of things (alas still not up to date on emails, several people are now nodding their heads, should they happen to read this space). What has struck me is that things that were spiraling out of control, as soon as I caught up on them, seemed almost effortless to maintain. Now, I’m about to go into another semester, so who knows, but with an internship, the managing editor position, working at the computer lab, and looking over the job postings, it’s not like the summer has all been a romp through a field of wildflowers.

So, do it now in one hour, or do it later in an hour and a quarter. Your choice. Am I being too conservative with this? Does it sound crazy? Do you get stuff done faster when you wait until the last minute?