I had a weird schedule this semester. 4 classes, 1 of which was online, and the remaining 3 were all on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. No classes on Tuesday/Thursday, and nothing before 9am or after 2pm.

This seems like every college student’s dream. I admit I found this situation very appealing after a couple of weeks into this spring semester. “I can get so much done with all this extra time: especially on Tues/Thurs”, I thought to myself.

I was wrong. Despite my overwhelming surplus of free time this semester, I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked to get done, thanks to…

Parkinson’s Law

was put forward by British professor C. Northcote Parkinson in his writings. It states:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

which, unfortunately, holds extremely true, at least in my life as a college student. The issue: I love to procrastinate. For example: this semester, the first regularly scheduled Tuesday commitment on my calendar was at 3pm. In an ideal world, I would maybe go to bed late on Monday night, but wake up at 8:30am, shower, make some breakfast, and spend a good couple of hours in my apartment getting some solid studying done. How often did this actually happen? Practically never.

Why? Well, because why would I study when I could read entertaining Reddit threads, eat frozen mango, and lounge in the comfort of my room? That’s often what I did. Far too many times, I rationalize my time-wasting, because I tell myself: “I can always do my schoolwork later, when the deadline actually comes.”

This is a problem! I have limited, valuable time in college. I can’t be wasting it alone in my room, watching movies and reading online forums, when there are much better ways to spend my time. I’m thankful that I didn’t waste too much time this way. But I should work to eliminate any time wasted when clearly better alternatives exist.

How do I realistically eliminate wasted time? A couple methods:

Get rid of wasted time

Trigger memento mori, but for the end of college

I have this function in .zshrc, my shell configuration file:

grad() {
  local target now diff days hrs mins secs
  target=$(date -u -j -f "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ" "2028-05-13T22:00:00Z" +%s)

  while :; do
    now=$(date -u +%s)
    diff=$(( target - now ))
    days=$(( diff / 86400 ))
    hrs=$(( (diff % 86400) / 3600 ))
    mins=$(( (diff % 3600) / 60 ))
    secs=$(( diff % 60 ))

    printf "\r%dd %dhr %dmin %dsec until graduation" \
      "$days" "$hrs" "$mins" "$secs"
    sleep 1
  done
}

when grad is run in Terminal, it live-prints the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds until my commencement ceremony is complete. As I’m writing this:

> grad
757d 19hr 36min 51sec until graduation

Then, whenever I feel like I’ve wasted time, I run grad and realize that college will end, and in just a couple hundred of days. I can’t be wasting valuable hours while that timer ticks down. Nope, can’t do it.

Drag myself out of my apartment

If I feel like I’ve wasted time, I force myself out of my apartment onto campus. Even if I’m unproductive on campus, at least I’ve gotten some steps in and might run into friends. Plus, the on-campus environment is typically better for my focus.

Use SelfControl

I have SelfControl configured on my Mac to block my most common time-wasting sites: YouTube, Reddit, various .io games, Twitter, HackerNews, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. If I need to get real work done without the threat of a looming deadline, I typically need SelfControl enabled, so my dopamine-addicted monkey brain doesn’t try to open time-wasting sites every time I get moderately stuck on anything schoolwork-related.

Do more things

The greatest enemy of Parkinson’s law is committing yourself to more things. Every semester, I’ve committed myself to more regularly scheduled activities, and I always manage to come out fine in terms of schoolwork and mental health. Every scheduled activity reduces the amount of time I waste, and I haven’t been “burned” yet.

Ultimately I’m still doing well

This whole post is about how I’m wasting valuable time, but thankfully, I’ve still managed to do a lot this semester that I’m proud of. I’ve gotten more involved in my student orgs, stayed pretty on top of my classwork and two part-time jobs, clocked some good friend time, done a lot of awesome travel, and generally had a great time.

I tend to be pretty frustrated when I waste my own time, which is probably a good thing. But I am also aware that it’s possible to overdo it and attempt to optimize every waking moment of my existence. I’m trying to take a balanced stance, and get the most I can out of college, while not stressing myself out too much.