Your Time is Now by Aashrith

Have you ever been through so much coursework in one day, to the point where you started regretting all of your life decisions? If you have, you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. 

It’s past midnight and you have multiple tasks to catch up on. What do you even do? Give up and hope for the best? Pull an all-nighter? 

You’ll soon begin to realize that any path you take will leave you on a stranded island. 

You finally start swiping through different videos on tiktok, trying to escape reality. The sad truth is . . . there is no escape. At some point, you’ll have to get off your phone and actually start doing your assignments. But by this point, you probably have scrolled for an hour or even more, which makes it even harder for you to start. After going through this dreadful time, you’ll think about the consequences of your actions. 

I’m here to prevent you from ever going through such pain again. 

If you’re reading this, you are probably a high schooler dealing with a lot of stress from all of your classes and extracurriculars. You’re a high achiever and want to go to a competitive college. This starts with time management. 

Going through and trying to get good grades in a rigorous course is not even close to the hardest battle you’ll fight throughout high school—it’s procrastination. 

Hopefully you will take my advice and start using your time wisely and working efficiently.

For starters, you need to realize that procrastination will stop you from being productive at school and at home. 

Last year, in my AP Precalculus class, my teacher gave us individual class time to work on homework and study for the midterm that was coming up in a week. I didn’t use my time wisely at all. Because I spent my time in math class playing games with my friends, instead of working on the homework, I was overwhelmed when I got home. 

I had work for another class to worry about, so I was not able to study much for the math midterm. Of course my mistakes led to situations far worse than I realized, and I earned a test score that I could not get myself to look at twice. 

This doesn’t just apply to me, though. Nuria Codina, a psychologist from the University of Barcelona, stated that “Procrastination in university students, with an incidence of between 80 and 95%, is a problem observed in different areas of everyday life and it subsequently affects graduates’ performance levels and well-being in the work domain.”

Procrastination is a problem that reaches beyond high school and college students. People we know and admire have struggled with time management. Even Bill Clinton, the 42nd U.S. President, was known to be a chronic procrastinator and was terrible with punctuality during office. He would delay his speeches, and he later admitted to last-minute copy and paste sessions the night before the speech. 

So I hope you understand that you’re not the only one struggling with these time management issues.

A major problem people our age have is the need to use their cellphones all the time. Social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have all caused us to waste our time by checking on other people’s lives. 

If you feel like you are the only one who has experienced this, think again. World Metrics stated, “Around 88% of students report procrastination at some point during their academic careers.” 

All of your peers are struggling with the same exact problem every single day. In fact I have struggled with it in the past as well. 

One night, when I had a week’s worth of work that was due the next day, I felt hopeless to the point where I did not want to even start it. Feeling dissatisfied with myself, I started doom scrolling on my phone for hours, trying to escape the harsh reality.

I ended up starting the assignments at 11 PM, and I only got a few hours of sleep that night. At school I was basically half-asleep, and I regret all the decisions I made. 

“You’re not doom scrolling, you’re hope scrolling. Pause and ask yourself: What do I really hope to find? And then go and find it,” Sarah Gynberg said. 

My advice to you is to find the right motivation to get started on your assignments. The roadblock you’re facing happens because your brain was trained to give up when it sees a hard or tedious task, so the first thing you think about is your phone. 

It’s not because you’re lazy;  it’s just the way that you faced challenges in the past, making it hard for you to get ‘locked in.’ The best way to combat this issue is by telling yourself you’ll work for five minutes. If you do that, your mind will naturally let you work for longer, getting you in the work zone. 

Start implementing this in your work habits, and you’ll see a major difference.

After reading through all of my advice, I want you to reflect. Reflect on your life and the goals that you have and think about what you want to achieve in the future. 

In five years, do you see yourself being happy? From my intuition, you definitely said “yes,” but the unfortunate truth is that only around 50% of Americans, on average, end up being satisfied with their lives. A high percentage of the people who ended up without their dream job most likely wasted as much time in high school as you are right now. 

That is the problem. That is the obstacle. That is the wall stopping you from moving forward. 

Put an end to procrastination once and for all. Just remember, whenever you scroll or get distracted by something unimportant, you’re not only wasting time, you’re stealing from your future self. 

Let that sink in.