My seventeen year-old son is a bit of a maths nerd.
He is also a world-class procrastinator! And not just that, but a procrastinator who has never once come close to passing the marshmallow test! His reasoning: Why wait until tomorrow for two marshmallows when I can have one now, and chances are there will be another tomorrow anyway. Especially if I ask nicely!
He can put off even the most important things (it’s his mother’s birthday in two days – has he sorted a present? Of course not!)
Instead his focus is on playing games and spending time with his friends.
He is learning to drive too. And that involves passing a theory test. Now we all know that however smart you are, passing the driving theory test requires you to read and remember the Highway Code. Whether you pass on the first go or on the twentieth attempt you have to pass and to do that you have to know the Highway Code.
If learning the Highway Code requires, say, six hours of study (for a maths nerd) and then the theory test is a three hour commitment (getting to and from the test centre and taking the test) then there is a minimum requirement of (say) nine hours to get through that part of the process of learning to drive.
You’d have thought that a maths nerd would have been all about the efficiency. Minimise the amount of time taken to pass the theory test and maximise the amount of time for play and friends. But not, it seems, if you are a marshmallow test-failing, procrastinating maths nerd!
Having failed to even open the Highway Code, test one (two weeks ago) was a waste of three hours. Test two (in ten days) looks set to go a similar way, the Highway Code remaining undisturbed, slumbering under his Nintendo Switch case.
He’ll have to read the bloody Highway Code eventually. Unless he takes so many tests that he just gets lucky, like the monkey with the typewriter!!?
I just don’t get it.
But maybe it’s just that I’m a bit of an efficiency nerd?
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