The Art of Procrastination
For the adept and inept procrastinator
Here’s to helping you reach greater heights of procrastination and enabling you to embrace and perfect your skill. If you’ve got to do it, do it like a pro.
Do you often stretch deadlines beyond limits with little to no effort at all? Have you continuously made non-committal efforts to curb your procrastinating prowess, failed, and subsequently threw in the towel on it altogether?
Below is a rundown of four foolproof and time-tested tips to help you maintain a high-ranking status in the self-sabotage path you’ve repeatedly chosen. Or, for levity, the path that chose you.
1. Stay well-versed.
Arm yourself with resources that will give guidance on how to kill your procrastination mastery. Books, Articles, Podcasts… You name them.
Amass as many of these gems as you can and indulge in them. It may not relinquish your legendary status but will surely make you feel like you’re doing something about your presumed ‘bad habit’ even when you constantly fail to execute any of what you read.
Pro tip: The longer you delay a task, the lesser the chances of ever doing it. Delay it long enough and you may never have to do it.
2. Plan to unplan
It always helps to get those plans in check and make to-do lists to guide your schedule. List down what it is you hope to achieve, complete with the timelines for each task.
This encourages to not only get things done, but also get them done on time.
Since this isn't what you'll be hoping to achieve, ignore the plans as you’ve always done and embark on more fun distractions or nothing at all.
It shall not be all in vain as it will have served its purpose of duping your mind to believing you are indeed in charge.
Edward Young might argue that procrastination is the thief of time but sometimes a thief deserves to be rewarded and embraced, not punished. It's the reality of the world we're living in, after all.
3. Craft viable excuses.
This is a no-brainer but I can’t stress it enough. You need to formulate some cock and bull reasons to circumvent what needs to be done for your own self-efficacy.
Feed your conscious and subconscious mind with as many of these vindications as possible to deduct and redirect any blame from yourself.
Pro tip max: Profuse indecisiveness elevates your procrastination expertise. Engage in more dithering to be a master procrastinator.
4. Embrace perfectionism.
So you are a tried and tested perfectionist? No problem. It has gotten you jobs before, it can surely do something for your procrastination.
Spend as much time as possible on a task no matter how uncomplicated. Dissect every trifling detail until the deadline is near and gone in search of the ever-elusive perfection. You’ve been here before and have survived it to date.
A toast to you.
So here is to putting off for tomorrow what we can do today. Remember to save that critical task for the last minute. It undoubtedly makes for a good sport.
Procrastination might bring about lost opportunities, strained relationships, financial distress, loss of jobs, declined physical and mental health, among others but all that is nothing compared to the instant gratification of not doing it now.
A little satisfaction now is far more significant than the losses birthed by procrastination.
What it really is.
Procrastination is the act of postponing or delaying what needs to be done now for later, often because you find it unpleasant or simply just lack the will to embark on it.
Research shows that the age group that procrastinates the most is that between 14 and 29 years.
It also indicates that men procrastinate way more than women, a finding I’d bet most women would back up with sufficient evidence but I digress.
For your continued procrastination, I wrote this banking on your dissent of my view.
In the bold and timeless words of author Alyce Cornyn-Selby, procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed it, you might fancy checking this out.
