Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah I’ll get it done!” my father always yells to my mother. My father is a procrastinator. Always has been and always will be. In college, he was the kid who stayed in the library until 5 A.M. studying for an organic chemistry exam that he had at 8 A.M. the next day. By doing so he said that he always felt the information was “fresh”.
Me? Not so much. And now in my third round of finals during my college career, I am finding out just how stressful they can really be. In the time leading up to now, I knew how to manage my time to an extent where I got everything done without stressing too hard. Yes, it would be somewhat last minute, but I would always find a way to sleep easy. Maybe it was the easy breezy-ness of freshman year that helped me skate by with no pain. Or maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t nearly as busy as I am this year. Juggling a job, a leadership position in my sorority and maintaining good grades have not been easy this year, thus procrastination has found a new home in my life.
It’s not that I am like my father and like to wait until the very last waking moment to do something, or is it because I am lazy and do not want to do something. It is because I like to overthink things. Overthinking is my specialty. Ask me to make a simple decision, such as what do you want for dinner tonight, Chinese or Mexican? Well I certainly like Mexican food a lot more, BUT it always hurts my stomach. Chinese food is quicker and easier to order, BUT I’m not in the mood. I could start studying for this exam, BUT I really need to come up with my sorority’s social media posts for the next week. I could start outlining this paper I have due on Friday, BUT we are going to discuss clarify the paper’s requirements during discussion on Thursday, so I’ll just work on it Thursday night. I am constantly finding myself in a perpetual state of “but”. I like to overthink and analyze things to the point where I convince myself I am going to be fine, BUT really, I should probably get a head start on that paper.
However, not all procrastination is bad. Procrastination works for some (like my father) and science even says that it could be healthy for you. In an article published on Smithsonian.com, University of San Diego professor Frank Partnoy says that “procrastination is just a universal state of being for humans. We will always have more things to do than we can possibly do, so we will always be imposing some sort of unwarranted delay on some tasks. The question is not whether we are procrastinating, it is whether we are procrastinating well.”
Partnoy also states that procrastinating is perfectly healthy for you if it is active procrastination. An active procrastinator puts off a task because they have other tasks to do in the meantime, all while still holding the intention of getting the original task done on time. However, passive procrastination is when it turns ugly. Passive procrastinators put off tasks because they don’t want to do them, and would rather be doing anything else besides being productive.
Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-procrastination-is-good-for-you-2102008/
Procrastinating is an art form. It is not bad unless you learn to do it well. “When I delay starting, the pressure to finish a project in a constrained time period acts as eustress. So instead of hindering me, it actually benefits my motivation” says fellow procrastinator and boyfriend, Joe Riddle.
Procrastination works for some people and is the only way people will get things done. It is all about finding the right method for you. If you know you need to start studying a week in advance for an exam, by all means do it! But for those living in the perpetual state of “but”, procrastination is a key to success.
