On the night of 29 October 1787, with quick steps, Mozart entered the scene, that you’re seeing, in The Estates Theatre in Prague. He was so excited.
He stood in this very place and he greeted the crowd. The crowd was even more excited than him, after all, they were going to hear one of the most important works of a composer who was a legend even while he was alive, for the first time. Don Giovanni. This piece is so important that Philosopher Kierkegaard says, this one is on the top of every classical music track. If you have a chance to see only one opera before you die, this is the one that you should see.
Ont the premiere night of such an important piece, there were people more excited than Mozart, even the people who came to listen to it: Orchestra members. Do you know why they were so excited? Because they could not practice it at all. Because the Mozart that just now stepped into the scene with a quick step finished writing the notes of the overture of the track you are listening to right now only a few moments ago. The ink on the paper that was put in front of the orchestra wasn’t even dry yet. Because even geniuses like Mozart could postpone their work until the last minute.
Is there an easy way to finish the work of today without postponing it to tomorrow? I don’t know if it’s easier but I will give you a game recommendation. Let’sfacee it, almost everyone tries to postpone the work they have in their hands. If you do this too, don’t just blame this on a flaw in your personality and accept it. Don’t say “I am always like this” “I can never manage my time!”. Don’t say that. Because procrastinating is not a time management issue. It is an emotion management issue. Let’s say there is work that you need to do and let this be homework or a report to write so that it can fit with the case of workers, students, and also me.
When you look at the empty white paper you might have thoughts like these: “I am not smart enough to write this even if I wrote it, what will people that read it will think of me? I never liked writing at all. Hold on… … I haven’t tidied this desk up for a while… I will come back to this work once I organize this place!” This is the exact mood that encourages us to procrastinate. When we go deeper into those thoughts, we see self-doubt insecurity, and anxiety kind negative feelings we don’t stop at finding these, without even noticing we attach these to the white paper in front of us. So, we make a correlation between the work we have to do and those negative feelings. This is a very dangerous correlation that’s why we try to avoid and postpone them. But let’s say we postponed them but when we come back after organizing our desk for the 3rd time that day although it wasn’t urgent at all. Then what happens? These negative feelings surface again. 3 times bigger.
When we have something to doa a variety of things and bright ideas come to our minds other than it. Like organizing the desk and stuff. These are prizes our brain comes up with to avoid the work we have. You can only reach the present if you procrastinate. If we want to do work we need to do instead of postponing we should make an offer way better than these presents to our brains. An offer cannot refuse. The thing I offer to my brain is to play a game. It is a very easy game. You might have played this with a different context.
“1–2–3 Hush Puppy” game. Normally, in this game after saying ‘Hush Puppy’ everyone goes silent. The person who talks or laughs leaves the game but without stopping tries to make others talk and laugh, you know. This is the game we will play to beat procrastinating. But not with other people.
With our brain when we sit down to do the work we need to do we will say 1–2–3 Hush Puppy and we will not leave until we finish the work. Surely our brains who are playing games with us will try to talk us out of it by making us think various things. It will try to win by making us laugh with activities that are way funnier than the work we are doing at that time. As it thinks But don’t forget. If we finish doing it despite all these we will win the game. And believe me, the stress and pressure ending at that time will be a much better gift to our brain.
I will recommend you 3 different strategies to play 1–2–3 Hush Puppy game easier with your brain that you will remember even while counting these numbers.
1- Separate-Divide-Conquer Strategy. The work you have might be difficult and take a lot of time to complete.
Make sure to separate it into easier pieces. Aim to complete only one piece each time. Your brain wants to procrastinate because it is too hard to swallow the big bite. To swallow it you’ll have to transform it into little bites.
2- Pick the hardest piece and start with that. Make the difficult one fun so that starting becomes easier.
3- Get rid of everything that can distract you. By everything internet-only would be enough I think.
With the approach of October, a new era begins in our lives. You might have been postponing all your work until now. You might have postponed studying for an exam for 3 weeks even though you knew 3 weeks before it was going to happen too and crammed the night before I ask you to not blame yourself for this if you did stuff like this before this is not a flaw about your character. This is something almost every human does. Even geniuses like Mozart. But don’t let this be an excuse to you too. Because he postponed to the last night composing the entry of only one of the 600+ works he had composed in such a small lifetime that is 35 years.
Except for that one, he continued to transfer the notes in his brain to the paper in front of him consistently. While starting this new period, keep these notes and 1–2–3 Hush Puppy game in your mind as well. After dividing whatever it is that you have to do say “1” loudly. Put the hardest part in front of you and continue with “2” and put your phone on airplane mode, you can also shut your computer’s internet down if that’s needed, and after saying “3” start the work with “Hush Puppy”. Do it now, because you already started doing it.
