‘Procrastination is like masturbation: its all good until you realize you just screwed yourself’

A few days ago I tried to discover the cause of my excessive procrastination: it all came down to a lack of clarity. Sure I knew I had to do some task, but I hadn’t broken it down into simpler steps (eg. Research, Organize, Structure, Write). Everyone knows they should do the research first, but in today’s society, who has time when its easier just to skip it.

I found that I lost focus when I didn’t know what something meant, or what I should have done with a piece of information – because when that happened, my brain stalled. When your brain stalls, you see something that might yield new information, though totally unrelated, and go for it on the off chance that it might be a better use of your time, than just sitting there dumbfounded.

Trying to research and write about a subject at the same time is a sure fire way to get lost in a jungle of information. Without a clear understanding of the topic, you can’t know how to group information to present it in a logical way. How are you meant to give your audience a clear picture of your topic if you don’t understand it fully yourself? Without understanding the relevance of information or how it fits in, you will find yourself discouraged and confused, and of course then it seems going to Facebook is a better use of your time than spending twenty minutes doing the research you should’ve done in the first place.

So, I used what I call the ‘information process’ to break tasks down into four discrete steps: Research, Organize, Structure, Write.

Research

The point of research is to gain a full understanding of your topic. I typically mind map it, or collect all the information in OneNote. This is so that you have everything that you will need later on.

After you’ve finished your research you should have an amorphous blob of raw data and an understanding of how it all fits together.

For example, if you were researching Car Engines, you would first get all the information about individual parts (eg. pistons, the engine block, camshafts, etc). You would then spend some time working out how those individual parts fit together to make the engine.

Organize

Organizing is where you consolidate all the raw facts into groups regardless of what question your actually trying to answer. This will be like a reference for you when you need to quickly look something up later.

Typically you will be able to break things up into discrete parts, and then have a section on the whole which relates how everything fits together. A good example of this is a wikipedia page, as they typically have a brief summary up the top, then go into individual detail below. This is particularly useful for abstract concepts as you should now be able to relate them to physical concepts and use metaphor to provide understanding which you’ll be able to later use in your finished product.

Continuing the Car Engine example: you would arrange the information about each part (eg. pistons) into a logical order. Although some people do this as they research, I find that it means you have to repeatedly change how things are grouped as you discover more. This step is also necessary because your not going to find things out in a logical order. You might get a bit on the size of pistons from one website, then another bit from a different website, and then look it up in a book and find that piston size is directly rated to the engine size instead.

Structure

This is the first step that is specific to the task at hand. During this step, you need to decide what information you actually need to answer the question, and in what order you will present it. This is like a plan for the resultant work.

I often cut and paste the bits that I need from my organized information into a new document. This document will become the basis of what actually ends up in the finished product. This removes the temptation to add in extraneous information that will just bloat, and sometimes confuse your audience.

Imagine that the question you had been asked was: The efficiency (kW / fuel used) of car engines is dependent on engine capacity. Explain. You would then copy a lot of the information about the piston size, but very little about the valves used, for example.

Write

This is the most obvious step: you simply need to take your structured notes, and phrase them as to answer your question. By doing this, you will have a clear understanding of the topic which is useful for later (particularly if you have to sit exams), and your finished work will be logical, well-structured and concise.

By following these steps, I have found that my work has increased in quality, and that I am more prepared for exams. My tendency to procrastinate has also dropped largely, and I now have more free time to do the things I want.