Week 2 - 1 minutes left to post this thing!

For a week now, I've been keeping track of how much I procrastinate. I tried to catch myself every time I put off something. Then I made the decision to either be good and go back to my work, or continue putting it off.
Seeing as I am posting this entry at this hour (lol! Rachele prophesied this in class), you've probably already guessed that I did continue to procrastinate most of the time. What was I supposed to be doing? A ton of homework for five different classes/studying for three exams that are within the next week/starting on several projects, including the psych paper. There is also other stuff, but what matters is that I have been putting everything off for the last minute. I realized that part of my problem is that I use my laptop to do most of my homework. This is a bad thing because I get distracted easily when I am doing homework, and the internet and Photoshop are extremely distracting. I am not proud of the fact that I spent a lot of time re-doing my Myspace last week (although I am proud of my new profile ^_^). I also spent a considerable amount of time editing pictures and chatting. Sometimes I caught myself and switched back to homework, but that did not really happen often.
I have noticed that I procrastinate bigger projects more because I am slightly afraid of starting them. That's why I like Winston's idea of breaking goals into smaller, do-able, ones. In fact, I did make some goals for myself this past week. I wanted to finish all of my homework the night before it is due, before 10 pm. I accomplished this for a couple classes. I also told myself: "Repeat after me. I will start Project 2 for CSCI within the next few days." And...well.....I will start on it, seriously! Tomorrow :(
I can say that I procrastinate often, and once I start, it is very difficult to stop. My incentives for doing other things instead (photography, myspacing, biking, youtube, etc) is simple: I enjoy doing them more. In order to make long term changes to my procrastination habit, I will have to get rid of certain distractions that perpetuate it, such as the internet, my camera, and phone. While working on something that does not require internet usage, I can disable my connection. I can also give my camera to my mother to hide somewhere until I have completed whatever assignment that I should be working on. I will try this for a week, and if it works, I will use these methods to design a program based on operant conditioning. I can't wait to start punishing myself...woah! This must mean that I will not procrastinate this blog once I start the actual behavior modification.
:D

Introduction

Hello, my name is Mehwish. I am a student at Mt. SAC and I am majoring in psychology. This blog is a project that I am doing for my first ever psychology class. For this "Behavior Change Blog", I will design a plan/program that I will follow over the course of my class. What I aim to do with this program is use operant conditioning to modify a specific behavior of mine. I have chosen to change my extreme procrastination habits.

Procrastination gets in the way of a lot of things. One of the things that I avoid doing the most is school, which can be surprising because I am very serious about my schoolwork and grades. All I can say is that I am addicted to putting things off for later. For instance, I have taken several minutes just to type this blog entry up because I am checking my email in another window, while simultaneosly reading. I think I developed my procrastination habits in high school, where most of my classes were online so I did my school work from home. Planning my own schedule + the internet - teachers = HARDCORE PROCRASTINATION. I learned and became an expert at coming up with all sorts of excuses to put things off until the last minute, and sometimes even the last second. Excuses so convincing that I can even convince myself. I am always missing due dates and submitting sloppy work because of having little time to do it. Obviously, procrastinating can be very destructive and that is why I desparately need to change this behavior. But I will really need to work on this project, and for that, I will need your help in motivating me.

Mehwish