For my behavior I wanted to measure my own procrastination – which is actually deceivingly productive. Honestly, I feel like I did really learn a lot about the cyclical nature of my own habits through this exercise and was quite amused at how counterproductive some of my choices were to managing my overall academic life and stress.
The biggest takeaway really is I am excellent at starting tasks, horrible at completing them. After tracking my days I put my most common repeated activities into a connectivity circle where my days basically included waking up, leisure activities such as hanging out with friends and scrolling through social media, stress management activities such as walking and organizing/journaling, and then working which over the days compromised of me starting many tasks and seldom completing any.
What I found from the connectivity circle is that I am perpetually in a cycle of feeling stressed about some deadline or assignment, so I start by procrastinating a bit (excessively hanging out with everyone I know, doom scrolling online), then I feel a bit more stressed so I manage it by going on walks and organizing myself a bit more, then I feel better and ready to start a task, which makes me feel great so I’ll stop after starting something, neglect it, and then get stressed when I don’t get around to finishing it… so the cycle continues!
I drew out this connection in the feedback loop below as well for my second diagram. I will actually start many new tasks without finishing a single one which only compounds the amount of active stuff going on in my life which brings back stress and resets the loop. I honestly learned and took away from this that I need to work and manage my academics in a way that makes sense rather than doing it from a state of panic or stress. This ended up being what I identified as the initial trigger to this cycle. Overall this activity was very useful and has given me insight into my own behaviors!
