Having been a student for fourteen of nineteen years of my life, if one thing has been hammered into my skull, it’s the evils of procrastinating. In the education world, the word “procrastination” becomes synonymous with attributes like lazy, disorganized, uninvested even. The resounding message is that if you do something at the last minute you’re bound to half-ass it, the end result inevitably subpar. Yet to some students it becomes a challenge; the rush of secretly completing something the night before (or even morning of) and getting a good grade, as if a letter on a piece of paper, or more likely nowadays in an online portal, is the end all be all judgement of doing something "well" or "correctly."

In an article about what goes on in the brains of procrastinators on his blog "Wait But Why," Tim Urban discusses how procrastination is a curse to productivity. He claims that those who procrastinate allow their brains to be run not by rational decision-making, but by instant gratification. After stumbling upon a Vice article detailing Joe Mellen's experiences drilling holes in his skull to get high, reading an interview of his partner Amanda Fielding and her own experiences drilling into her own skull, and then extensively researching trepanning and its psychedelic effects instead of coming up with an idea for this week's article, I had a pretty good guess at the processes controlling my brain. Part of Urban's argument is that while procrastinators almost always end up getting done whatever they need to get done, they rarely get around to completing intrinsically motivated tasks like creating an app or starting a company.

Adam Grant depicts a different idea about procrastination in a New York Times op-ed piece; namely the creative benefits of procrastinating. Calling herself a "pre-crastinator" in her compulsive need to finish assignments right away, she claims that our first ideas are always the most conventional and that putting something off or coming back to it allows for divergent thinking. Famous procrastinators like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and even Frank Lloyd Wright serve as shining testaments to her theory. However, she acquiesces that procrastination can also be harmful in certain time-sensitive situations.

Manifestations of both of these ideas are easy to recognize in day-to-day life. I truly value all of the 2 a.m. deep-web discoveries I've made while I was attempting to write research papers or study for tests. Creativity is an unpredictable force. It cannot be coerced; sometimes it's born of time pressure, other times it requires the inspiration of transcendent people or places, or even the mundaneness of waiting in line for the bathroom somewhere. "Good things come to those who wait" and whatnot.

But creativity alone doesn't foster productivity or real results; effort has to be an equal player. Putting something off indefinitely does not count as a creative hiatus. There's no worse feeling than the motivating yet unmotivating paradox of completing an assignment at the last minute; you don't even care how good it is, you just want it done as quickly as possible. Having the time to truly pour your heart and soul into something is equally valuable. "The early bird gets the worm."

So is there a happy medium to allow procrastinators to surpass just getting things done by also making our own personal projectss into tangible realities? A medium that would force those plagued by pre-crastination to put down a task in order to gain creative perspective?

I'm working on it, I'll figure it out sometime...