All I had to do the other night was study for one test — not even a hard test at that. I sat down to look at my notes at 9 p.m., and from that moment on I was useless. I cannot even tell you where my time went, but I do know that it was not spent studying. Hours passed and next thing I knew it was 2 a.m., and I’d only made it to slide two of 50 on the PowerPoint. At that point I was too tired to function, so I pushed back all the other work that was due … I don’t know … yesterday. It’s an endless cycle of irresponsibility.
Procrastination — we all do it. It’s both my best friend and my worst enemy. Most importantly, though, it’s one of my top talents.
I once had a book report due at midnight. I opened the book for the first time that night at 11 p.m. and wrote 16 pages in less than an hour. I turned it in on time and got an A++ (not joking about the double pluses). If that’s not impressive, I really don’t know what is.
I’ll be completely transparent with you though — I’ve probably taken at least four hours of breaks already, and I’m only on the fourth paragraph of this column. To add to the ridiculousness of it all, this column was due last Friday. I think I need to lay out the process of writing this to fully convey how out of control I am.
I wrote the first sentence. Then my brain hurt, so I took a 20-minute break devoted to stalking my sister on Facebook. Then I wrote three sentences, deleted one of them, then took another 15-minute break talking to my editor John Mark about a peacock feather that randomly appeared in the office. That break spurred my productivity and I finished an entire paragraph before taking an … errrr … two-hour break in the student center for lunch. I don’t think I’d ever sat in the student center for more than 30 minutes until that point, but I was desperate to avoid work.
I have also failed to mention that aside from writing the column, I had to get 100 responses to a public survey by 5 p.m. that day, I had a newspaper deadline that night and I had a test and quiz the next day.
But doing useless things always takes priority.
Let’s see … what else did I do? I stared at a wall for 20 minutes, caught up on all the celebrity gossip, busted out my Nicki Minaj and Lil’ Wayne-inspired alter ego, ate a lot of junk food, told embarrassing stories from my childhood and, best of all, watched Boo, the world’s cutest dog, on YouTube for an unreasonable period of time before liking Boo’s page on Facebook and finding his personal website.
As you can see, I struggle with placing my time in the right venues. Don’t worry that I haven’t opened my book yet to study for my test, even though I had plenty of time to score a six out of 10 on the “Boo the Dog Quiz” (I still have a lot to learn about that precious Pomeranian pup).
Why change something that has worked so well for me in the past? I accomplish more in the crunched hour before deadline than I would if I worked for eight hours the week before. One day, though, I will crash and burn. My procrastination will come back and bite me in my just-failed-that-semester-project rear. But until then, you’ll be able to find me in the same place next week. Just finishing this column at 2:12 a.m. the day the paper is going to press. So irrational, but so worth it.
