Stop PROCRASTINATING, Start Pro-CASTING!! by Tanzim

Stop PROCRASTINATING, Start Pro-CASTING!!

written by Tanzim

Hello, my dear grads!! This is Tanzim, your GRAD consultant at HOWE, and I am here to share with you how I Pro-CAST, which indeed helped me get rid of procrastinating. Trust me, it works! Before I jump into the details, let me paint a brief sketch of my academic context that will help you get the background of this discussion.

I am a second-year master’s student in Architecture, working on my final thesis this semester, that too while juggling between job applications, GA duties, and the workload of 19 credit hours of classes. I’ll be honest, that’s a lot! Sometimes I feel I have signed up for way too much responsibility than I can handle. Dealing with so many varieties of work within the academics, naturally makes a big pile of deadlines on my work desk, eventually scaring me off to do none of those and rather scroll down my phone screen in an endless loop of panic. We all have different realities in life, which make it even harder to concentrate on just the academics. Last semester, around such a time of frustration, I decided to give myself a break and lift off the responsibilities for the weekend. It’s not like those cinematic breaks, where you go to a scenic retreat and magically attain Nirvana! I still had a lot on my plate, so I was right here in Oxford, meeting all the daily needs and taking care of domestic chores. But what I did do for that week, is take a break from any mental burden of academics. I delegated the deadlines that I could and spent that time doing whatever my inner child wanted to do, which sometimes meant doing absolutely nothing. This is when I came across the book “Welcome Home” by Nazwa Zebian, which literally acted as a comforting cradle for my suffering inner child. I could go on for hours on this book and its content, but today, I’ll focus more on how my takeaways from this author, impacted my academic life toward a positive shift. So on a calm afternoon of that “break-week”, I was casually flipping through the pages, not quite reading so to say, while I came across these lines:

“These mountains that you are carrying,

You were only supposed to climb.”

My eyes were transfixed on the page for a while and I wondered to myself how I never reflected on the burdens from this perspective. I was indeed carrying all those mountains that were just meant for me to climb! I started working on that thought as I gradually transitioned into my regular work schedule. With every little or big deadline and submission, I started taking a moment to reflect on how this is not a burden on my shoulders, but rather an adventure to conquer. This new mind shift inspired me to try alternate strategies to cope with the diverse and loaded academics, and this is the one that finally worked for me, which I named, Pro-CASTING. So, think of a situation where you weren’t supposed to do a job, but make someone (or more than one) do it. Imagine yourself as a film director or a football coach. You know how things are done, but instead of doing it yourself, you are mentoring or guiding someone else to do the job. Now think of all the good and bad personality traits you have, and try to imagine them as individual characters/ players. If you stopped thinking of yourself as a whole, and that you are the only one in charge of doing all these works and instead consider running a team within your persona, the psychological pressure of accomplishment automatically goes down. Being from the Theatre background from my college days, I started imagining the entire work scene within my head as a drama that I am directing. This brought in a fresh insight into things, and I started discovering which work I do best at what time, place, or mood. I started allocating the list of works according to the custom needs of my actors, aka my varying moods/capabilities. This helped me sort out the right work for the right time; I was not responsible for the big picture at that particular time. It’s like completing a quick task that your boss gave you, and you don’t have to worry about the rest. 

This is not an overnight thing; it takes time and patience. The changes come in baby steps. I am still growing within this new system I developed for myself.  But I do see the progress, not just in my academic work but in my mental health as well. So I request you to give it a try, even for just one day. Be a casting director for yourself and cast those gems of actors inside you to present your own play. Be your own boss, trust your team, and let the magic happen! You’ll be amazed at how much relief you will feel in the process. On that note, let’s stop procrastinating and start PRO-Casting!!