Procrastination: a How-To

Procrastination is my favorite and least favorite thing all rolled into a fun ball that I’ll get around to doing at some point, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Between the pull of the internet and its cute kitten videos and the pull of the entirety of everything else that I could be doing, I am the master of procrastination. It leads me to late all nighters, an inhuman amount of coffee, and 5 PM naps that allow me to keep functioning on a basic level. Four and a half years worth of college have only strengthened the idea that I will always be a procrastinator. I’m good at it. I have taught myself to be my best when I know that it’s crunch time and I have to get it done. But there’s a skill to procrastinating, a strategy if you will. 

Step one is to simply get the assignment or task at hand, and sit it right beside you. Maybe not directly in front of you but close enough to your periphery so that you know it’s there and it’s staring at you demanding your attention. And I promise you, you’ll know it’s there and you’ll start thinking about how to do it in the most efficent way possible as to be able to continue your Buzzfeed quiz binge quickly. 

Step two is to distract yourself for a while, all while continuing to remind yourself that it’s still staring at you, demanding your attention. Then you will reassure yourself that you are a master under pressure and that you will get this all done and still have plenty of time to sleep, get up on time for your class, and dress like a normal human being. Then you see the clock.

Step three involves quite a bit of manning or womaning up on your part. You know what time it is and this assignment is a pretty sizeable percentage of grade. It’s time to get down to brass tax. You’ve actually been planning how to do this assignment all evening in your brain, well now it’s time to put it onto paper. Put on your power jam, or shove some earplugs in and just do it. If you’ve got to type, don’t touch the mouse until you absolutely have to in order to ward away your want to press that little yellow box and Youtube on. If it’s point and click, grab a lockdown browser and don’t you dare touch that phone. Few things in real life have an extension policy, so you may as well get used to it now. 

Step five: go to bed. Just trust me. 

Speaking as a Senior who’s almost out the door, procrastination works for me. So while I’m not advocating it for everyone, if it’s how you function best as a student and getting everything done early just doesn’t work out for you, then odds are that you’re probably just like me. And that’s cool,.College is about learning, and sometimes that means learning about yourself, too.