Procrastination: a student’s favorite hate-to-love word (and no, I don’t mean love-to-hate in this case). Those of us who indulge in procrastination oftentimes find ourselves hating that we do it so much. Sure, it provides us with time to do as we please, but at what cost? A ruined sleep schedule and ludicrously high stress levels? It’s neither viable nor healthy in any way. According to Solving Procrastination, a procrastinator is a person who unnecessarily postpones decisions or actions. This delay in performing our tasks or making choices can extend to many facets of one’s life, such as house chores and university assignments.
To be honest with you, I find myself mainly struggling with procrastination when it comes to schoolwork. I’m aware that I have several assignments of varying difficulty or even a test and will still sit in front of the TV and rewatch Hannibal on Hulu. It’s a horrible sort of guilty pleasure that I experience as I waste time. And yet I can’t stop myself from doing so. I feel the time ticking away and the deadlines creeping ever closer, so why don’t I do something about it? I believe it has to do with the instant gratification procrastinating brings. You’re not really doing anything productive, but it’s not like the stress of actually doing things just goes *poof*! Procrastination is binge-watching several episodes of our favorite anime while mentally freaking out about our responsibilities.
As mentioned in my article about Gifted Kid Burnout Syndrome, I often opt to lose myself in plot-driven fantasies in my mind. It’s fun and I can have all these characters interact in different ways. But the truth of the matter is that it ultimately isn’t doing me any good and, at the end of the day, it really puts me behind on my homework. Watching series on streaming platforms and going down the YouTube rabbit hole also play a prominent role in my spectacular loss of time.
Although laid out humorously in an Instagram post, the self-loathing that follows the procrastinatory tendencies is very real. It produces high levels of stress and can even lead to irregular sleep patterns. It allows for subpar work to slip out as a consequence of rushing to work at the last minute.
Honestly, it’s difficult to ask others for help when it comes to procrastination. Because of the very nature of procrastination, you could be perceived as lazy when, in fact, you could suffer from severe issues with organization and time management. Personally, I struggle with time management, am very easily distracted, and it usually takes me a while to actually get around to starting my tasks, so that’s a terrible combination right there. In true procrastinator fashion, I wrote this piece on the very day we had as a deadline to turn it in. How’s that for a lack of progress?
Even so, I’m going to keep trying to get better at taking care of my responsibilities without procrastinating. As redundant as it is, it will take time to do so, but I know I will be alright anyway. Sure, there’s some pressure with the deadlines I’m given; it’s nothing I cannot handle. I won’t finish this with some bogus advice about how you just need to focus more in order to stop procrastinating. Rather, it’s an uphill battle with our minds that we can win in the long run. We can do this (…after just one more episode?).