I'm seriously ADD status

[GRLMGC]

I have the shortest attention span and I can't write my paper. Someone, give me a decent attention span, please!

[TayTay]

1. No can do girlfriend. Mine is in the shop.

And I am fried tonight. I am only good for 'funny posts' as my sense of humor is the last thing to go in my brain. The censure wars have fried my brain right good. Sigh!

AHm, perhaps an outline, followed by 29 minutes of looking for a news article only to come upon 3 different magazines that you have not quite finished yet, but could if you tried, while watching The Daily Show on tape and cooking dinner. It is not organized, but is highly entertaining, until something shinier comes along.

[GRLMGC]

2. I think I'm incapable of starting my work early

I have another day to do it and I think I probably work better under pressure. Still, it makes me feel like a failure :(

[jenndar]

3. OMG, you have a day and it's already started???

You are a better scholar than I, madame.

[GRLMGC]

5. This is rare

I did this last week and I had the same problem. I always wait till the last minute but I feel like I can't afford it right now because I have so much other work to do.

[jenndar]

6. Have you ever started a paper the day it was due?

Good times.

[WildEyedLiberal]

7. All the time

<---- bad student :spank:

[MH1]

8. Been there, done that, know exactly what you mean.

(I just got done grad school. My posting frequency at DU spiked significantly whenever I had a paper due. Funny how that works, huh.)

I ultimately came to the conclusion - If your really can't be productive at all on the paper, then just give in and do something else. Just know how long it will take you to do it and make sure you are appropriately wigged out at the prospect of failure by the time the clock strikes t minus x.

If that's too scary, then...

One thing that sort of worked for me (sometimes) was to figure out something small and very specific that I needed to do first, or nearly first. Make myself go do "just" that one little thing, and then sometimes that would pique my interest enough that I would be motivated to continue on with the next thing, and then the next thing, and so on.

Believe it or not I still have to do that sometimes at my job. I have recently been given a rather challenging assignment where I am required to use a specific tool that was new to me, and I'm finding out is a real pos (to be nice about it). It's just a major freakin pain in the neck to work with, and I have other, more interesting and satisfying projects in my queue at the same time. Yet this PITA project is my top priority, the only one with a real hard deadline (like tomorrow). So I hemmed and hawed and finally wrote myself a "story" about how I would approach it. Very informal, like writing on a blog. Everytime I hit a snag I "blogged" what wasn't working and my thoughts about why maybe it wasn't working and what crazy things I could try to fix it. Then I would try those crazy things, and so on.

So anyway I figured out how to make it interesting - even though my approach was hardly "efficient" by traditional standards, it sure beat continuing to procrastinate and having to report essentially no progress at the next status meeting. And as it turns out I am now in a pretty good spot for my meeting tomorrow. Whew.

I don't know if that helps at all. But that's the best I can come up with. ;-)

[GRLMGC]

9. FIVE PAGES

out of eight, thank God! I think I'm gonna stop for now. I have no desire to write anymore, haha

[MH1]

10. Wow, that's pretty good...

for the day before it's due. ;-)

[Island Blue]

4. I could never sit still while writing a paper in college.

I had to be up, walking around, throwing a Nerf ball up against the wall. It helped me to think and to focus.

[jillan]

11. Seriously ....

I too had the same problem while in college.
One day I was talking to my dad about it, and he confessed that he too had the
same problem. He told me to wear a visor when I was studying and having a hard
time concentrating. The visor blocks out visual distractions, and forces your eyes to
look down at your desk.

It works. Got me thru college.
Yeah maybe I looked a little nerdy at the library, but I didn't
care. It helped me thru alot of loooong, boring assignments.