Some people love putting things off until the last second. Some people really need to get every last detail just right and show off the effort they put into something. And then there are the people who have the worst time balancing both of these things in their head. This perfectly describes my predicament. I am a procrastinating perfectionist.
One of the worst combinations you can be is both a procrastinator and a perfectionist. On one hand, I desperately want to get something done with time to spare to check it over and make sure everything is perfect. I’ll plan out in my head that I’ll get started on projects or studying weeks in advance. I’ll even write on sticky notes all the things I want to accomplish and set goals for myself. On the other hand, though, I’m extremely lazy. Those sticky notes don’t have a date on them, so I just leave them for another day. My to-do lists just get stupid things like “shower” or “eat dinner” or something I did earlier that day added just so I can then immediately cross it off and feel accomplished. And in the end, basically, nothing gets done that I planned to do until the last minute.
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If you yourself suffer from this terrible combination, you already know how it works. The night before something is due arrives. You haven’t started. Or maybe you have, but usually only to the extent of opening the instructions and calling it a day. Even then, you’re putting it off as long as possible. You open the instructions for the second time and you think you deserve an hour of Netflix. Read the first couple of paragraphs? Another hour. You finished reading it!? Not only do you get Netflix, but you can make yourself some dinner too!
Procrastinating perfectionists just don’t seem to have the ability to tell that they’re in trouble until they’re there. There’s this exact moment when it clicks. That moment when your constant breaks with barely any work switches to full-panic mode.
Dinner and Netflixing was great, but you start to look back and forth between your blank page of progress and the clock a couple times and there it is, the moment. The moment when you say to yourself, “Oh crap”. Panic mode sets in. Your procrastinating side has let you go this far without touching a thing and being completely fine, and in this moment, your perfectionist side in you grabs ahold of you and reminds you that it doesn’t want to fail.
We all know what happens next. You work (hopefully) fairly diligently on the project for the rest of the night possibly pulling an all-nighter or close to one trying to get it done. Sometimes your procrastinating side tries to steer you away with your nature to be easily distracted where just about anything becomes entertaining, but one glance at the clock reels you back in. After finally finishing the project and hating yourself the whole night, you then swear off ever leaving something so big until the night before ever again.
Being a procrastinating perfectionist is a bit of a strange relationship with yourself. Usually, you are envied by your peers because you do things the last minute but still get good grades, but at the same time, you hate yourself every time you do it because you know you can’t just let yourself fall asleep with a partially done project or half-assed amount of studying. Even after leaving something until the last second, you can’t just turn in something that isn’t finished.
As procrastinating perfectionists, however, we stay up super late to get every last detail in and probably got away with it by getting a good grade, so we all know that promise we made to not leave things to the last second won’t last. It’s a seemingly never-ending cycle, and sadly, as long as we get away with it, we probably won’t ever stop!
