I've always had trouble with procrastination. It doesn't matter what it is or how important it is — most things get put off until the last minute. Heck, I even procrastinated on writing this blog post. The problem is, if I procrastinated on a personal project long enough, I just didn’t do it and there were no consequences. But then last year, I graduated high school and entered college. With the pandemic limiting almost every aspect of what we could and couldn’t do, I suddenly found myself with more free time than I knew what to do with. Throughout my life, I’ve always had ideas for projects that I wanted to complete or STEM things that seemed complicated that I wanted to learn, and now in college, those would be great things to have fun with and add to a resume: stuff like 3D printing, learning CAD, learning different programming languages, etc. Sounds cool, right? Only problem was, I just kept writing these down and never acting on them — they all seemed so hard to do! Something had to change if I was going to efficiently utilize my extra free time. At some point, I remembered a book that I realized I had always owned but never really given a second thought. I decided to give that a shot.
The book is “Get It Done: From Procrastination to Creative Genius in 15 Minutes a Day” by Sam Bennett. Minutes into the first chapter, I already felt understood. The book itself is about why people procrastinate on personal projects that they’ve wanted to do — perfect for me. The author starts off by assuring the reader that procrastination isn’t something they have to tackle alone, then goes on to describe some reasons we might procrastinate on certain projects. A memorable saying I like to keep in mind is: “If you start procrastinating, your project is probably too big!” The other chapters go on to help the reader overcome self doubt, develop organizational skills, and start to put their work out there into the world. In between chapters, the book lists “action steps” which are meant for the reader to actually spend some time playing or working with their projects. I find these helpful because they only require 5-15 minutes of my time (you would be surprised at how much you can actually accomplish in 15 minutes).
After reading the book and finishing my first year of college, I looked back at what I had accomplished and what I had felt. With “Get It Done”’s help, I had managed to start learning SOLIDWORKS, design a few things to 3D print through my university, learn some Python basics, and find time to also do my schoolwork and art projects… and I felt good about it. While I didn’t accomplish everything, it was definitely a start, and I highly recommend this book if you’ve got back-of-the-mind projects and no idea where to begin.
Good luck and happy learning!
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