I know I am not the only one to wait until the night before to write a paper. I'm sure most of us have procrastinated at least once in our lives. To be honest, some of my best work comes out of my bad habit of procrastination.
If you have ever read (and hopefully enjoyed) one of my articles, I can pretty much guarantee I began writing them a few hours before the deadline. I'm sure that I could avoid loads of stress by writing them before, but nope. I just have a love for procrastination. Or it loves me. I don't really run this relationship, it runs me. I'm just the car, and it's the driver. That takes a lot of wrong turns, and detours, and goes 10 mph in a 55-mph speed zone and then 100 mph in a 25-mph speed zone. When the assignment should be reaching final editing stages, here I am chugging along cranking out the first draft, sometimes I don’t even proofread before turning it in. It's like that saying "Procrastination is making 30 minutes of work last 8 hours and complete 8 hours’ worth of work in 30 minutes."
Now to totally contradict my own article, I have to say I wrote the majority of this article a full 2 days ahead of the deadline. Shocking I know. Sometimes when the passion hits, the magic flows. The hard part is when there is a lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation, and a lack of dedication. I'm not saying that I don't care about my classes, or I don't like writing for Odyssey, there's just always a lot of variables in our lives. Our brains are always running full speed ahead. The hard part is drowning out the constant voice of everything else that has to get done in order to get things done. For me it's always difficult to start something I know will be challenging because the time and effort it takes scares me. I have so much other stuff to do that I can’t afford to waste all my energy on one thing.
I always feel so accomplished once I finish something, but it's the stress of starting it that keeps me away from that feeling of accomplishment. I start something and then think “oh I have so much time to finish it” and then I start something else, or think that I can watch some Netflix because I have enough time. And then the tasks are forgotten for a few hours because everyone knows that I can't just watch one episode, or I start pinning things about my favorite TV shows and can't stop. When I finally realize what time, it is and how much time I wasted, I begin to freak out because I wasted so much time doing useless things. It's most likely 10 PM the night before it is due, and I have hours’ worth of work, so my stress level builds and builds. Then I get to work. I start punching out the essay or practicing the presentation. Afterward, I feel that sense of accomplishment and maybe that will keep me going for a day or two, but then the cycle starts again.
Don’t get too hard on yourself about procrastinating a little, sometimes you realize how easy something can be when you are pressed for time. Or you realize that you understand a little bit more than you thought you did. A little procrastination isn’t that bad, but once in a while try to beat the procrastination off for a little while so you can feel that sense of accomplishment too.
I still don’t know how to beat the evil procrastinator inside my mind. I guess I will start defeating that beast next semester, or next year, or never. Whenever I feel like it.
P.S. Even though I started this earlier, it's right before the deadline (actually slightly after), as I finish it.
