I'll Just Think of a Title Tomorrow

I think everyone has been infected by this virus of the mind and body at least once in their lives, if not afflicted by this disease constantly, as I am. This nasty entity seeps into every pore of my being and often can be quite contagious for unsuspecting people around me. No, I'm not talking about leprosy, the H1N1, or SARS, but another invisible devil: procrastination. To prove how sneaky this little beastie can be, look at this paragraph itself: it took me 65 words just to get around to telling you what I'm writing about. It invades even my writing. Sometimes I even put off going to bed; afraid I might decide to do some work if I stay up a bit later, but even if the need to work does arise, I usually find an excuse to justify why it would be better done tomorrow.

I wasn't always a procrastinator. I used to be (and still am...see a problem, perhaps?) a type of perfectionist. I say "used to be" because though I still feel a need to make everything as perfect as possible, the level of perfection required for me to be satisfied has dropped off quite a bit as my obsession with procrastination has taken over. However, when I was in high school, I remember being the antithesis of a procrastinator: I did all of my assignments the day they were assigned and I set daily goals of work to be done and always had everything on my list satisfactorily crossed off by the time I went to sleep. This wonderful habit lasted all of the way until the second semester of my first year at university.

I had "socialized" a bit too much one Thursday night and came home excited to tell my roommate, Paul, all about my night out. I found him hunched over him computer, finishing editing his essay for a class we had together. "Done early, eh?" I asked him. With wide eyes conveying a knowing look, he replied, "Yeah, about 5 hours early. You do know it is due tomorrow at 8 am, right? But you're done, of course, right?" Panic rushed up my spine as my mind flashed to the pile of unsorted research notes and my computer I'd left running with the opening paragraph I had roughly sketched out followed by a blank page and a frantically blinking cursor. "Uh, yeah," I replied, as I rushed to spend the next brief hours trying to clear my head enough to produce at least a paper that would earn a passing grade. I spent the whole time cursing myself for waiting until the last minute, knowing my scholarship might be on the line if this paper earned a bad grade. At 7:55 AM, paper in hand, I managed to get it turned in on time and then spent the next two weeks worrying (after I slept for the rest of the day). You might be wondering how this story sparked my affair with procrastination, as it seems that I would have learned my lesson and stayed with the all-perfectionist approach after all of this. However, the key to this story is the grade I received on my written-the-night-before essay: an A-. Angels sang and the skies opened up when I saw my grade and suddenly, all was clear. Why spend hours of time working on something when you can do it the night before and produce a good product? This, unfortunately, has become one of my main mottoes ever since.

After becoming a teacher, I realized that being a procrastinating perfectionist is very stressful. I can no longer grade or plan everything the night before; the overwhelming work requires grading on a daily basis, which becomes very hard to complete every day, especially after working 8-9 hours at school. Besides the obvious reason why I love procrastinating (work comes later, play now), I keep wondering what else it is that draws me so irresistibly to procrastinate. Could it be a fear of not doing the work well, so if you never start, you never fail? Perhaps. I have tried to end my affair with putting things off, but procrastination is a coy mistress and, with ploys of sweet naps and entertaining movies, he often lures me away from my work, even when I try to resist. In fact, this entire post reeks of irony, as I'm staring at a pile of essays that need to be graded by next week as I keep thinking of more things I want to write. So, to end the duel inside my head, I will quickly share what I have found to be helpful tips for combating procrastination as well as things that I've found DO NOT work.

Ways to Stop Procrastinating:
1. Just don't procrastinate.
2. Give yourself lots of fun breaks if you have to work.
3. Remember #1.

Things NOT TO DO When Trying to Stop Procrastinating:
1. Take a nap.
2. Make reasons for why it would be better to do tomorrow.
3. Eat a lot.
4. Watch "just one TV show" before beginning.
5. Write a haiku about procrastination:
I plead and bargain.
The evil temptress traps me.
Must finish later.

Though this list is very comprehensive, I'm sure there are a few other ways you can stop procrastinating, I just don't have the time to research them right now. I think I'll go take a nap and maybe I'll get to that later, before I start grading those essays....