My Enemy
I know that scrolling on my phone before going to sleep is a bad habit. I also know that the only way to stop scrolling is if I don’t bring my phone into the bedroom at night.
But my phone is also my morning alarm, so I need an old-fashioned alarm clock to make it work, which is exactly what I bought from Amazon.
This simple purchase is a big deal because I haven’t allowed a clock to cross the threshold for a long time. For a simple reason, as long as I remember, I have been fighting against the passage of time, and the clock is the true face of time. Despite my best efforts, time has always been the victor.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to abolish time or pretend it doesn’t exist. When I need to know the time, I look at my phone or ask my Google Nest, but I can’t bear the time in the form of a clock.
You might think this is extreme, but it’s the truth. As a procrastinator who often falls behind schedule, it often leads me to rush to my next destination, and a small part of me always feels like time is racing against me.
No matter how much I crave five more minutes to do what I need to do or to get to where I need to be, time is relentless, always ignoring my pleas.
Ineffective negotiations with time are just one of the ways I try to tackle my time management issues. Others include various productivity books, such as Atomic Habits and Time, countless digital and paper to-do lists, and I am very familiar with the Pomodoro technique.
These time management aids, combined with my natural tendencies, such as being a planner, focusing when interested in certain things, and being detail-oriented, have never allowed me to miss a deadline, enabling me to mask my struggles with the passage of time.
When you are prone to procrastination (on everything), you often find that it takes a tremendous effort at the 11th hour to avoid…