麻豆视频

This column was inspired by a 60-second video of a hospital for coronavirus patients being built in Wuhan, China in 10 days.

If you haven鈥檛 seen it yet, it鈥檚 a huge building, not tents or something temporary. It鈥檚 a real hospital with infrastructure and everything needed and that's supposed to work. And it was built in 10 days. That made me stop and think.

When I came across the video, I still had a few articles to write and several phone calls to make, but instead, I was surfing on the waves of the Internet, observing the world on the other side of the window, making a list of things that have to be done next summer. In short, I was procrastinating.

A while ago I watched a TED-talk by Tim Urban (highly recommend if you tend to fall out of your reality and get lost somewhere in between social media, house duties and 鈥渧ery interesting鈥� articles as soon as you have something complicated to do). His point of view inspired me and actually made me move then, but I didn鈥檛 think of that video until now.

Briefly, common observation: the closer the deadline is, the more adrenaline we produce and the more active and productive we become. With that, when we don鈥檛 have a deadline, any kind of serious task may take forever, if it鈥檚 ever accomplished at all. We may keep procrastinating for a long time (just think how many unfinished great projects you have idling in the back of your mind). But Urban suggested a trick that may help change the approach.

He offered to convert your live-expectancy into weeks and draw them as a table on a piece of paper, crossing out the weeks that are already in the past. One big piece of paper will be more than enough for that, I tried. And when I actually crossed out another week, when I haven鈥檛 accomplished something, all of a sudden, procrastination stepped back and I got going towards my goals.

They say there are good sides to procrastination. It saves our energy and allows us to do only the really necessary tasks. For artistic people, procrastination might create room for inspiration, where the brain, being in passive mode, puts previously acquired bits and pieces together and may come up with something new. Besides, the adrenaline rush that comes closer to the deadline boosts our productivity, and when running out of time, we tend to find the shortest cuts possible.

At the same time, the quality of our work leaves a lot of room for improvement. The more we procrastinate, the more stress we are going through, worrying and losing sleep. And while the speed in the face of the deadline is almost above our capacities, sometimes it鈥檚 still not enough to get things done. And the main thing is that precious time we waste between the start point and the moment we actually start doing something, we鈥檒l never get it back. That鈥檚 the scariest part.

But coming back to that hospital. Life knows how to be witty. The situation with coronavirus reminded us that there is literally a DEADline, and if we don鈥檛 become active, it may arrive very quickly. So something that quite often takes dozens of months and sometimes years, took a dozen days to build. While it probably wasn鈥檛 easy and was quite pricy, it wasn鈥檛 impossible.聽

And that made me think, what if we as humanity could get rid off of our global procrastination and boost our productivity. Can you imagine where we could be if we would just set goals and accomplish them in a matter of days? Wouldn't it be crazy?