In high school, my friend was the master procrastinator. When I say master, I mean she wrote up (multiple) final projects the morning they were due and got an A. To demonstrate my own procrastination skills, I waited until an hour before this article was due to write this.

I have recently come to practice the strange addiction that is procrastination. I used to think it was dumb—actually, I still do, because why would you wait until the last minute and risk not finishing it?

If we’re to be technical, the original definition of procrastinate is to put something off in a lazy or apathetic fashion, which means it probably won’t get done, right? The way I’ve heard it used, though, is to put something off but finish it anyway. For example, in the middle of this paragraph I stopped to play a game on my phone, but here I am now, finishing this paragraph. Procrastination.

The thing is, it takes a certain level of determination and care to procrastinate correctly—that is, to actually finish your task—you must care enough to be stressed out enough to finish all ten tasks in the hour before they’re supposed to be done.

But once they’re done… well, everything worked out fine and, in fact, you’d be okay with doing it again because what could possibly go wrong? It’s a strange sort of relief—of ecstasy, even—that comes with getting something done, with crossing something off your to-do list. Procrastination lets you cross the entire list off at once—it’s that feeling of finishing something, magnified tenfold. And it's rather addicting.