What made me realize how vital it is to get things done was watching a TEDTalk by Jason Fried called, Why Work Doesn't Happen at Work. It was a very powerful video in which I, and I'm sure the whole class, took into deep consideration and could really connect to with all the work we have to get done in this project. To avoid these distractions as much as we can, I learned that large chunks of time to work makes us do it effectively with the least distractions possible. When researching for the article, for example, we are given 3 hours to work, so we are as switched on as we can get in order to achieve as much as we can during that time period. | |
| The fact that our first draft of the article is due less than a week from now, shocked me, because time has been going by so fast that I had lost track of this. I have to admit that at the beginning of this week, we got pretty distracted easily, but given the few days we have to finish this draft, a culture of discipline and hard work was more necessary than ever. How easily people can get distracted is startling; it can start with one person off task, and all of a sudden it becomes a virus that spreads and spreads, so eventually everyone gets distracted. Together we decided to avoid this problem, and as a class brainstormed solutions, whereas for me the most important one was to avoid communication with the other groups during busy time. This way, you have nothing on your mind other than the task you are working on, which is how real QUALITY work is produced. |
This discussion took place Thursday morning, and by that same afternoon, I already felt the difference; it was huge. By not getting distracted at all during our research time, not only did we finish all our research needed to complete the article, create an outline, and actually start the article, but I found something about myself. I found the critical eye which I never thought was in me. When revising our research, or the paragraphs we had started from the article, I would look through the magnifying glass to find any small imperfection whatsoever, and had to fix it. I had never been this critical about my own work, but this time I was working so hard to get it done, that it suddenly became my top priority to make it the best it could possibly be. |