How to Procrastinate

In English 102 we had to write a how-to guide for something we were good at. I wrote this.

Procrastination carries a negative connotation that often steers people away from it. While in practise, procrastination can save time and stress, in theory it is a sign of laziness and low self-control. What those who avoid procrastination never experience is what any expert procrastinator lives on: the satisfaction and thrill of the last minute dash to complete a task.

There are a few skills that are essential in successful procrastination. First, you must be able to avoid reality. This seems like a fairly basic skill, but it isn’t. It’s just not. You have to be able to completely and absolutely eliminate all thoughts of the future. Don’t let worries of graduation, homelessness, job loss and failure get in the way of your procrastination; the moment you allow yourself to glimpse reality, you will have lost all motivation to put things off. If
you feel guilty about your procrastination, you aren’t doing it right.

To feel guilt means that you have considered the consequences. Once you have considered the consequences, the guilt almost invariably leads you to fail at procrastinating successfully. Don’t think about the future; concentrate instead on everything else you could be doing besides your task. (Let’s assume it’s an essay.)
So don’t think about it. That’s the first step. The second is to be able to live in the moment. You have to be able to see all the possible things that you could be doing right now. Why research for an essay when you could be surfing Wikipedia or watching The Simpsons reruns? Carpe Diem. You have to be creative. If you really don’t feel like doing homework, there are hundreds of things you could do instead. Hone your tetris skills. Clean your toaster. Kill a ninja. Build a fort out of furniture and blankets. The main things is not to tempt yourself into actually writing the essay.

It may sound like procrastination is easy. Who doesn’t like to avoid reality? Who doesn’t have a life-long ambition to memorise every capital city on the planet? It seems like it should be easy, but it’s not. You have to be highly rational. Highly rational, for if you’re even the slightest bit scatterbrained you run the risk of starting your essay too soon. This will invariably result in you spending twice as long as necessary writing it, simply because that time is available. And that is not good at all.

You have to carefully scrutinize all available time in the future. Understanding that night does not exist solely for the purpose of sleeping, and that work can be completely twice as fast under pressure is vital. The later you start an essay, the faster you will complete it. It’s a simple concept, but one that people consistently fail to recognise, because they are so caught up in quality. The truth is that an essay written after weeks of procrastination can be of just as high or even higher quality as one that was started the day it was assigned, simply because the ideas have had so long to percolate in the brain.

After you’ve stretched out your leisure time as long as you possibly can, you have to, when it comes right down to it, really want to get your essay done. You have to be able to commit to writing for fifteen hours straight, and you can’t worry about how much damage all of that caffeine is doing to you body. If you refuse to allow yourself to fail, the adrenaline created by the last minute time-crunch will be enough to push your essay to completion- often in time for an hour or two of sleep before class.

Once you have gotten through the actual working segment of procrastination, the relief will be unmatchable. You will take pride in your skill, and think back fondly on all those hours spent playing geography trivia, when you could have been stressing out about the essay. You have done in a single night what your classmates spent weeks on. Your finely honed tetris skills more than make up for any marks you may have lost.