No Time Like the Present

Hello Student Leaders, I hope you're all having wonderful Labor Day weekends. I've been working. And not as a student leader, but on the lowest rung of the retail food chain. But enough about me.

No wait, let's keep going. Today I planned on a nice, quiet day off from school and work, only to be duly informed that I am going to be spending the day with my relatives. Which is not so bad. However, it makes enjoying Labor Day barbequing somewhat of a chore if you're the only person in your family that doesn't eat meat. Whoops. Seriously, we are almost a vegetable-less family. Meat's gotta be in everything.

But perhaps this is for the best anyway; when I'm home, I'm lazy. Case in point: my unread e-mail inbox is stacking up Jenga-wise despite having many spare minutes to respond to hopeful students with hopeful queries. Don't let this happen to you.

I used to have somewhat of an e-mail complex. If I were sitting online and I got a message, I'd usually wait a day to respond to it so I wouldn't look like the guy that sits home at night refreshing his inbox, despite being exactly that. In college, I came to appreciate professors who would reply within minutes to my e-mails, but, for some reason, this didn't make me reevaluate my habits for the sake of cool points, even though I wholly acknowledge the fact that I'm not cool, nor will I ever be.

So now I have a bunch of e-mails to respond to with barely any time free (thanks to the aforementioned relative hang-outtage) other than the time I'm spending writing this blog, and probably the time I will spend writing for another blog directly after this. I procrastinate in all the wrong ways.

Basically, if you find yourself in a position where people will suddenly give you attention, make sure you give them back the attention they deserve and sometimes crave. You don't have to call them back immediately, no. Nor do you have to say they're pretty or intelligent. But answer their e-mails instead of watching videos on YouTube. Otherwise, before you know it, you'll have dozens of e-mails left unanswered and you will probably continue to twiddle your thumbs and pretend they can wait until you're truly bored, or for when you need to procrastinate doing something else, like writing a post for a student leadership blog. My life is a vicious cycle.

Comments

[Tania]

Amen. Gmail is especially useful for email procrastination since you can put your emails through all kinds of levels of importance (for example put a label on it, star it, then archive it, or leave it as unread). The truth about email is that it usually only takes a few minutes to answer, but it is so easy to ignore. But then the other problem is that when you get really good at answering immediately, it tends to suck up way more time than necessary. Tim Ferris (the guy who wrote 4 Hour Workweek) recommends checking email twice a day in two fell swoops. I've just sent you an email, so I guess I'll find out soon how you've decided to resolve this issue.