I have a confession to make: I am very, very good at procrastinating. If you ask me, it's a terrible thing to be good at, especially as an English major. This past week, I had two essays due on the same day and each of them had to be 2,500 words long. Instead of writing them gradually, I wrote for pretty much a week straight until they were due. It was my most stressful week of study abroad so far and to be honest, I really wish I could've avoided it. Unfortunately, I would much rather go to bed early to watch Netflix instead of staying up to write 500 more words. If something isn't due the next day, I can't focus for long periods of time. Like many other master procrastinators, my best motivation comes from extreme pressure (for a great perspective on this, please watch Tim Urban's hilarious TED Talk about why procrastinators procrastinate). So, whether you have a paper due or you have to study for a test (and you probably do, because this is midterm season), here are the seven stages of procrastination:
Stage 1: Overestimating the amount of time you have before the deadline.
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I knew about my essays from the first day of classes. Back then, six weeks seemed like a long time to get two papers done. All of a sudden, those six weeks turned into two weeks, one week turned into three days and three days turned into twelve hours. Of course, I was at the time blissfully unaware of how fast those weeks would go by; it almost felt like the deadline would never come (P.S. I laughed way too hard at that pun).
Stage 2: Giving in to the "instant gratification monkey."
In the TED Talk linked above, Tim Urban talks about the "instant gratification monkey" who doesn't care about deadlines and only wants to do things that are "easy and fun." I love easy and fun things like Netflix, YouTube and social media. Or perhaps it's my instant gratification monkey who likes those things. This is why I always take "breaks" while writing and I always seem to find myself binge-watching Gordon Ramsay videos on YouTube.
Stage 3: Realizing that the deadline is much closer than you thought.
This is when Urban's "panic monster" starts to awaken. More times than I care to count, I have looked back at a syllabus and said to myself, "How is that due next week already?"
Stage 4: Stressing out so much that you give yourself writer's block.
If you thought you were procrastinating because of writer's block, think again! It was actually the procrastination itself that gave you writer's block. When you finally start writing, you are already too stressed out about the fast-approaching deadline to focus on the actual assignment.
Stage 5: Sucking it up and finishing the assignment in record time.
Maybe you'll have to pull an all-nighter, maybe you won't. Either way, sometimes you get the assignment done so quickly that you barely remember it.
Stage 6: Wishing you didn't procrastinate in the first place and promising yourself it will never happen again.
Good luck with that.
Stage 7: Repeat.
Not again... But hey, once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator. Try as you might, but it will always happen no matter what. Now stop procrastinating and get working already! Or don't. I guess it can wait until tomorrow.
