Procrastination index
It’s that dreaded exam marking time of year again. In universities all over the country, academics can be heard pacing around their offices and muttering things like “Come on! Just one more script, then you can have a break.” to themselves. I don’t know what it is about marking, but it’s one of the most severe procrastination generators that I’m faced with in my daily life.
There are a number of things that make almost anything more attractive than the prospect of marking scripts:
- There are so many of them. I don’t have as many as some of my colleagues, but even so the ‘unmarked’ pile seems to get bigger rather than smaller as you progress.
- My handwriting is pretty bad, but trying to decipher the scrawl of stressed students who are trying to write as much as possible in three hours makes your eyes go funny.
- If you’re marking one question, you see more or less the same essay with minor variations over and over again.
- It’s really important that you get it right.
The last one is the real kicker: the students have (mostly) worked really hard, and you want to be fair and give their efforts the attention they deserve.
While I was marking1, I came up with a ‘procrastination index’ to apply to unpleasant tasks. The idea is that you think of the everyday task that—-under normal circumstances—-would be the very last thing that you would want to do. Mine was cleaning the oven of burnt-on fish pie. Then you compare the current task and see if you would rather do this baseline task or your current one. I decided that I would rather clean the oven twice than mark scripts, so the procrastination index was +200. Fortunately, I was in the office, so I didn’t have the opportunity to take that way out. I just had to grit my teeth and slap myself every time my mind or body strayed to any task not related to marking. Roll on the end of the pile…
1 I’m sure that some of you will have spotted that this was a form of procrastination in itself.
1
By far the best piece I've ever read on the subject of procrastination is John Perry's Structured Procrastination. Basically he suggests that those of us prone to procrastination should accept the fact and incorporate it into our lifestyles. Thus, we should always have one or two really big things on the go, along with a number of things of lesser importance. That way, in order to avoid the really big things, we'll finish up as many of the less important items as the really big thing's deadline will allow. Thus making us appear far more productive.----- Aehm, am I leaving a comment here? No, I'm doing my online studies. grrr Darn RSS-Feeds. No I'm NOT procrastenating, I'm, I'm just, just telling you, that there's a book named 'The procrastinator's handbook. Mastering the art of doing it now.' by Rita Emmet. Nice to read. Ok. Have to go back to work. By the way: you're not reading your comments, or you're marking?
by phil @ 13/05/2005 12:05 pm • Permalink •
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scott lewis: That's actually not a bad idea, as long as you do actually do the big thing as well.
phil: I'll look it up. And the marking is done! I'm free! For a while at least...
by bsag @ 13/05/2005 4:05 pm • Permalink •
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I am a lifetime recovering procrastinator.
Right now I'm deep into GTD, but I created and used a Procrastination Index of my own devising. Here is how it worked. (And I'm thinking I should revive it, because it was very effective.)
I made a list of everything (that's the same as GTD) and assigned it a 1-10 point value. This value has nothing to do with priority or importance to others. This is purely how much I don't want to do it. A '1 'probably doesn't even make the list because I wanted to do it and it was already done. A '10' could be a very little thing, a phone call, but it was something that for whatever reason, I dreaded. Then I added up the lot. The aggregate value was my procrastination index, which I tried to keep under 100.
Thanks for the reminder.
by Diane @ 15/05/2005 2:05 am • Permalink •
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Diane: I like it! I've also read that you should work out what the thing you want to do least on your list and get that out of the way first.
by bsag @ 15/05/2005 2:06 pm • Permalink •
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Nice to know that yet another person feels this way about exam script marking. I found this blog post while procrastinating over marking a huge pile of undergraduate exam scripts on my desk.
Rather coincidental that I came across this as I browsed the blog briefly the other day when searching for stuff related to GTD.
Back to variation 63 of the standard answer...
by stressedacademic @ 23/05/2005 10:05 am • Permalink •
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