Procrastination

Why do we always end up waiting until the last minute? Everyone is guilty. No matter how many times you tell yourself you are going to get something done early, you always end up working on it until the last minute. I am extremely guilty of this. I have been improving with my work ethic, but I still end up waiting until the last minute to get things done, like this blog post. It is not just a problem with college students either. But why does this happen. It is interesting to think about how we put off some of the most important things that we have to do, and most of the time it is to so such trivial things like browse the web, hang out with friends, or watch television. But then isn’t that us just living our lives? We like to be able to relax every once in a while, but then we stress ourselves out to the max. Thinking deeply into it, it makes almost no sense. Why not just work progressively and be able to go back and forth between brief periods of work and relaxation. I think it would certainly have enormous advantages for our health and quality of our lives. It could almost be like taking naps throughout the day, something media mogul Arian Huffington strongly believes in to improve our work ethic and efficiency. Instead of studying for hours upon hours and then sleeping for hours upon hours, altering our work ethic could help with better memory retention and sleep patters. If we complete tasks progressively over a period of time, it is bound to be more successful than just pumping it out all at once. With all these advantages to not procrastinating and doing things before they are “due,” you would think that people would stop procrastinating, but I think it is always bound to happen. We have random events and activities come up in our lives all the time, which forces us to set things off to the side. Just something interesting to think about; I’m going to try to stop procrastinating.

How accurate are the responses for those online psych surveys?

A requirement for my Psych 100 class that I am taking this semester is that I must complete six credits of research through psychology studies advertised online. Most of the studies require students to report to a lab or classroom, but some can be completed online through websites like surveymonkey.com. As I hate traveling all around campus while I could just earn the same amount of credit on my computer, I tend to complete the online studies. Most of the studies take between 30 minutes to and hour. The studies I have completed range from the topics of dreams and sleeping to alcohol related questionnaires to studies on feelings and perceptions. After completing a handful of them, I have begun to realize that the results the testers receive are probably not the most accurate results in the world, therefore the studies probably cannot be construed as very accurate. Honestly, half way through I get irritated of clicking my mouse and selecting bubbles and start to flake on the validity of my answers. I always thought it was a bit interesting that they indirectly force students, by the incentive of points for grades, to fill out these long, time consuming questionnaires. I can confidently conclude that students are lazy and most likely do not give a crap about answering correctly, but just want to finish the survey and get on with their busy lives. Yes, this may sound unethical and careless, but I can only imagine how many students share this thought. Taking the other side of the story, the surveyors must know that they are conducting these surveys as requirements for students, and are aware that students are answering. So can they expect much? Well, it has to be hard for students to answer questions like: “on average how many drinks do you have per night?” and a myriad of other questions, which are almost repetitive in some respect, about our feelings and lives, most of which are also pretty general. The conclusion that I am beginning to reach is that most of these surveys that release their statistics based on student responses, so can they really be assessed as being accurate?

Is Apple King of Product Releases?

The computer giant is almost untouchable. Despite the death of its Silicon Valley icon Steve Jobs, Apple never fails at releasing updated and more appealing products, and always tends to increase sales. They have continued to raise lots of hype and rumors over their expected release of the iPad 3. With blogs like macrumors.com and 9to5mac.com, its hard not to, but even even with a new face leading the company and other structural changes, Apple has maintained their position as a technology and innovation powerhouse. Although their updated operating system Mountain Lion, released to developers in February, has failed to impress and has not made any huge changes, it continues to follow Apples goal of incorporating the Cloud into our lives more and more. But why do their products always generate so much exposure? It could be  because they are always rolling out with new features and physical updates to their hardware. Curiosity is human nature, people love to know the unknown and secrets.   With the size of the company theres always bound to be some employees who will tell a mac secret whites. Apple might just be one of the only companies that receive this hype.