Running towards entertainment

A few minutes ago I finished reading two really interesting articles, one written by a guy who had a heart attack at 31 years old and one written by a girl (I think it was a girl) talking about stupidity. Really nice articles and I'm glad I spent time reading them.

But as I was finishing the second article I looked at the clock on my computer and realized it's almost 12 PM. That made me worry a little bit and made me think "Oh God, what did I waste my time on?" This happened mostly because I didn't work on everything I wanted until now and most importantly, I'll have to work till late which means I won't be able to have as much fun as I want.

That's one thing that worries almost all of us these days, not having enough time at our disposal to relax, to have fun and spend our time doing what we love. I'm not saying those things are bad, especially since I love those days when I can play video games from the moment I wake up till I go to sleep.

It's just really interesting how we're willing to limit the amount of time we invest into our work for the sake of spending a few more hours doing something fun. As I was watching the digital clock on my screen I was planning how I'm gonna finish today's tasks in less than 4 hours so then I have another 6 to do whatever the hell I want.

We love to run towards entertainment no matter how much we love our work and it's curious why. Is it because no matter what we do, we're naturally lazy and we'd rather spend our time doing nothing productive than to put our brain to work? Or is it because we became addicted to any type of entertainment out there and we just can't get rid of this "necessity"?

It may also be that we got comfortable. One thing that always motivated me to work (besides loving what I do) was the fear of being (or better said, remaining) poor. Almost my entire family suffered, one way or another, from lack of money. There were only a few members I personally know that never really had to worry about being able to buy whatever the hell they wanted.

Now that I'm in a fairly comfortable spot (where I don't really have any money but I'm still okay) I want to have fun and leave work for later no matter how much I need to take care of certain tasks. I bet a lot of people are in the same situation and have no idea what to do to change it.

What do I do? I take my time. Every time I look at the clock on my screen and I think "I need to finish everything as fast as I can so I can have more fun", I instantly try to force myself to take my time no matter what I do. I don't hurry when working, I don't look at the clock any more and I just do things that way I should be doing them - slowly and with a lot of care.

That often results in me finishing all the tasks on my agenda in a fairly short amount of time (mainly because I was focused enough to do things really fast) and then I can have all the fun I want. It's interesting how in order for us to have more fun we need to focus more on work and less on... well, fun.

Some of you may disagree, but it seems like it works. When I combine this method with both inner and outer motivation, I get to not only focus on my work, but do things ten times better. How do you take care of your work when you're also running towards entertainment? Are you using motivation or are you simply forcing yourself to do the right thing?