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Procrastination, there’s something strange about this phenomena. Sometimes I observe that students felt a little bit “proud” about this term. Sometimes it’s so “inspiring” for them… so they start to put it as their identity. I can see it in their IM status. Also in some social network service (like Friendster, Facebook or StudiVZ), they have some groups of people revered them self as a procrastinator… Yes it’s you! You don’t have to raise your hand. I know you… .

Don’t ask me why… I don’t know the answer, maybe because it’s sound so nice: procrastination… procrastination…

Procrastinating is basically delaying to do something that you should do until the last minute, if not totally abandoned them. There are some classifications of procrastination; one from Sapadin (1997) summarized it very well. According to Sapadin there are six styles of procrastination: the perfectionist, the defier, the dreamer, the crisis-maker, the overdoer, and the worrier. If you have access to the book, go and read them, it’s worth it! Next time I will post an article discussing these styles, if I’m not procrastinating again… just kidding. You know I already healed, right?

Academic procrastination is referring to procrastination which occurs in academic setting. To mention some examples: cramming all night before exam, asking for extended time for delivering paper, delaying cleaning that horrible dormitory room, delaying grading students paper (in the case of professors), etc. Sounds familiar right? This habit is really a huge problem in academic live, according to William Knaus, 90% of college students procrastinate. 25% of them are chronic procrastinators who end up not finishing their study or dropping out.

Actually everybody procrastinate for certain reason. like having too many things to do or a matter of priority. But most of us procrastinate just because feeling lazy; not motivated or just set the wrong priority. As it gets more chronic it could lead to feeling of guilt, depression and low self-esteem. Why did I mention about the wrong priority? As we know beside studying students usually also work somewhere for some extra pocket money. I observed that sometime students get so enthusiastic with their job and put their study aside. Maybe they argued that their job is so important, they can earn enough money not only for pocket money but also for supporting their live, and they start to belief that their job is more important than their study. One fact that I want to say is that the younger you are when you graduated is the better. A lot of graduate study confirms this fact. If you graduated there will be more opportunity out there: more challenging job, more salary, further education, etc. So stop delaying to graduate just because you belief than your condition now (as a student) is already good enough for you. Like Anthony Robbins said: don’t settle less than you can be!

OK now the important question: how can we kick this habit away? Here are some tips that I pick from here and there. Not really scientifically proven. But most of them work for me.

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Last week one of my friend asked me, “If Linux is really that good, why people keep using Windows?” It’s really a good question and I think a lot of people out there have the same question. In this post I don’t want to list how Linux is better in a lot of areas compared to Windows because it will be such a long post. Just take a glimpse at http://www.whyLinuxisbetter.net/, this site summarized some reasons for you to try Linux. Instead, we will discuss why changing behaviour (and keeping them) is difficult for lots of people. We will discuss this with NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) approach and with more specific example on the difficulty to move from Windows to Linux.

This post is not an attempt of attacking Windows. Because I think Windows (still) has certain point over Linux. And I am also still using Windows for some working-related issue. So my point is I am not against Windows!

First I would like to take you to NLP environment. What is NLP exactly? You can find the global description about NLP here . One of underlying principle of NLP is the map is not the territory and people react based on the map - not the reality.

This epistemology by Alfred Korzybski prostulate that there is no such thing as objective experience. People do not really react or behave according to the reality, but in fact they react based on beliefs they have built over time about reality. Just one example: 1 hour felt like just 15 minutes when you enjoy something. But with the same time it might felt like 2 or 3 hours or even forever when you are in a boring class with a boring topics and boring professor . See my point? The time is the territory, it’s the same for everyone but how each people react to it is varies. Each people react by the map on their prior belief. So how can we take this to further application?

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QTAFI (Questions, Tables and Figures) adalah suatu aplikasi yang dikembangkan untuk mempermudah pelaksanaan survey. Dengan QTAFI kita bisa dengan mudah membuat kuisioner, membuat lembar data di SPSS dan mempermudah proses analisis data dengan SPSS. Aplikasi ini sangat cocok bagi mahasiswa yang akan membuat kuisioner ataupun fakultas atau universitas yang akan mengadakan survey penelusuran alumni (graduate survey atau tracer study).

QTAFI adalah aplikasi yang berbasis makro. Bentuk aplikasi ini berupa file dokumen berekstensi doc (seperti dokumen yang biasa kita buat lewat MS Word), hanya saja terkandung makro QTAFI di dalamnya. Untuk menjalankan aplikasi ini tentu saja MS Word harus sudah terpasang di komputer kita.

Saya mulai menggunakan aplikasi ini sejak tahun 2003, pada waktu itu aplikasi ini membantu pelaksanaan survey penelusuran alumni di UGM. Sejak saat itu saya terlibat dalam pengembangan QTAFI dan online.QTAFI (QTAFI berbasis web) walaupun hanya sebagai tester setia . Sampai saat ini pengembangan aplikasi ini terus berlanjut, terutama untuk versi online yang sudah sampai pada versi 2. Saat ini puluhan online survey secara bersamaan berjalan di server online.QTAFI2.

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Hi there! Some of my friends said that my blog is… well… how should I say this.. Not expressive, not personal enough, too heavy. They said that I should put more pictures, tell something more about my self, a little bit show off or something .
I don’t know why, I just can not write like any other blog out there. I can not open my self too big in this blog, it’s just too scary for me ha3.. I guess it’s just not me. However, today I want to share one good news with you all.

It started with a comment in this post from Carmen. She informed me about ICP (International Congress of Psychology). Then I just search for my old paper and without any consideration (about the quality of my paper ) I sent them away. I already forgot it when suddenly last week there was this email from ICP that said it is accepted as a poster for the congress. Yay!!!
A little bit sad though.. not accepted as oral presentation, but I think it’s good enough for now . And after I think about it, with poster there will be more people have access to my paper compared to oral presentation.

Thank you to ICP committee for embracing this paper. Thank you for my parent, Mom I love you so much! Thank you for my producer, my song writer and most of all, thank you to the people all around the world who have been touched by my song… Wait… wait… WAKE UP! This is not Grammy Award!!!

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