Annotated Bibliography for "Hey, College procrastinators! Stop Killing Time!

Annotated Bibliography

Gallo, Amy. "Stop Procrastinating...Now." Harvard Business Review. N.p., 11 Oct. 2011. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

The author of this article is an experienced writer, contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, and also an adjunct lecturer at Brown University. This article mainly discusses on what causes us to delay our tasks and how to overcome these habits. According to Ned Hallowell, delaying work often relates to how busy we are. Because of this human tend to dodge things that they don’t like. It is also said by Teresa Amabile that people procrastinate because they fear the difficulty of the task given. Among the tips to prevent these bad habits is to figure out what’s holding us back. Setting up our own deadlines would also help in motivating us. Other than that, we could increase the rewards for ourselves after completing a certain ask. Involving others are also another form where we can collaborate with others to prevent ourselves from pulling back. Lastly, making this good thing a habit. Maintaining this positivity can progress into meaningful work. This is a good article for our project as it 

Urban, Tim. "Why Procrastinators Procrastinate." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 1 Feb. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

The author is a writer and an artist for waitbutwhy.com. He also posts entries at Huffington Post. This article discusses and illustrates a certain view on how procrastinator minds works. Since the author loves to draw in his entries, he showed a drawing of what is going on in a procrastinators head and vice versa. In everyone’s brain, there is a ‘Rational Decision-Maker’. However, in a procrastinator’s brain, there is an ‘Instant Gratification Monkey’ coexisting with it. The decision maker tends to think about long-term stuff and its future. While the monkey only thinks about the present, ignoring past lessons and disregarding the future. The monkey only wants to maximize the pleasure of the current moment. The author also illustrated ‘The Dark Playground’, a place where leisure activities happen at times they shouldn’t supposed to be happening. However, as the time of deadline approaches, there comes ‘The Panic Monster’, which the monkey fears. As the monkey flees, this is where humans manage to do their last-minute work in a matter of time before it’s due. It may be completed, however, it is unpleasant and the result may vary. This article is interesting as it provides illustrative graphics for our research.

Opar, Alisa. "Why We Procrastinate." Nautilus. Nautilus, 16 Jan. 2014. Web.

The author is an article editor at Audubon Magazine and graduated at The School of Journalism at Columbia University. In the article, Derek Parfit, a British philosopher stated that humans are not a consistent identity moving through time. This shows that we are a chain of successive selves, evolving from each subsequent one. This shows that we see our future selves as strangers. The future is unknown to us. So the disconnected link between our present and time-shifted selves have real implications on how we make decisions. If we choose to procrastinate, we will let some other version of our self to deal with the problem. Same as in the present we may derive pleasure, and ignore our future self to pay the price. However, strengthening the connection of these may prove to be an effective remedy. Anne Wilson manipulated people’s perception of time by presenting timelines that are scaled to make an upcoming event. Using a longer timeline makes people more connected with their future selves. This article is informative for our project as it provides psychological evidence on how we think of ourselves and solutions towards it.