Do you wait until the last second to do something important? Do you use minor tasks to procrastinate larger, more important ones? Do you then find yourself trying to make sure every detail is on point? I am sure I can probably guess what you all are thinking- "Hey! That sounds like me!" And if you think that you can relate to some, if not all of these things, then, chances are, you are right. If you came here looking for advice on how to overcome procrastination or even perfectionism, you have come to the wrong article, and for that, I am deeply sorry.
We all procrastinate in some way, shape or form. Even your mom procrastinates sometimes (although she will never admit it to you). Some people just procrastinate better than others; by that, I mean that those people are capable of hiding the fact that they procrastinated. As a college kid, I do this all the time; I wish I could stop, but it seems like I am trapped in an endless cycle. Let me break it down for you.
The moment that a procrastinator receives a deadline, they sit back, relax and think of how they can fill all of the time they have before that due date approaches. To a procrastinator, a deadline means that they have all the time in the world between now and then, you can try telling them otherwise, but they will never listen (they are pretty stubborn; trust me, I would know, I have been trying to stop myself for years).
Suddenly, the deadline is sitting on the procrastinator's doorstep and time is no longer on their side -- that is when the moment of panic strikes. This is usually when they think they are never going to finish the assignment in time, and, of course, they blame the teacher for not giving them enough time (which they did) -- sometimes, this phase could even bring them to tears. This is the moment when the stress level can either make or break a person, depending on how well they work under pressure.
Let's take things up just one more notch, to the perfectionist part. Not only did this person (me) wait until the very last, possible second to complete the task, but they (I) will not settle for mediocre. No, the procrastinating perfectionist has to have every word, space and punctuation absolutely perfect (a feat which takes longer than the night before).
Eventually, after beating themselves up enough, and realizing that they will never love their final product, they admit defeat. No matter how big of a project, I always seem to procrastinate it through to the very end, panic that I will be unable to finish it with my standards, give up, admit it will never be high quality, then submit it. Usually, my final is never as bad as I make it up to be, and I tell myself that it will never happen again, but then we have all told ourselves that lie at some point in time.
