Perfecting Procrastination

The best ways you can procrastinate.
By Cody Hill

Editor in Chief

It’s zero hour. I’m sitting in front of my laptop, hot chocolate nearby, staring blankly at the screen in front of me. This article is due in just a few hours and I’m just starting it. I have procrastinated again.

That is not to say procrastination is a bad thing. When done correctly, it can help produce the highest quality work.

A study performed by Professors Angela Chu and Jin Choi found that “procrastinators direct their attention and actions toward pressing problems, offering themselves a greater chance of solving them in a satisfactory manner. Active procrastinators are extrinsically motivated and attempt to maximize their time utility, possibly leading to more successful task completion.”

However, if done incorrectly, procrastination can have the direst of consequences. Every time procrastination is used, you are betting your GPA’s future on a roll of the dice.

With a little practice and the “cojones” to stare a rapidly approaching deadline square in the eyes, or at least glance at it periodically while watching the big game, you too can become an excellent procrastinator.

The first step to mastering procrastination is juggling your deadlines. An experienced procrastinator learns to put off their assignments while simultaneously giving themselves enough time to finish the assignment. Take, for example, this article I’m writing. It’s not officially due for another twenty four hours, yet I know my schedule doesn’t allow me to finish the bulk of this article tomorrow. So I made sure to leave myself enough time to write most of the article now, but I also made sure to leave open some time tomorrow to finish the rest of the article I’m too lazy to write now. Just because you’re procrastinating doesn’t mean you should leave yourself in a hole.

Another thing to consider while playing deadline chicken is supplies. Like any good army or animal rights activist, you need to be adequately supplied while taking on procrastination. Caffeine is your best friend: if you don’t own an espresso machine, buy one. Amazon.com offers espresso machines that go from thirty to six hundred and fifty dollars, so there’s one for every budget.

Stay away from heavy foods like beef and beef burritos; they’ll make you want to take a siesta. Stick with foods that’ll burn off calories quickly and give you energy. Fruits and vegetables are good because they’re full of natural sugars to keep you buzzing and you can eat them raw, and if you’re too lazy to do your homework ahead of time you’re probably too lazy to cook. Raw food equals good food.

The most important tool in the fight against punctuality is the ticking clock. This will help keep you motivated as you race to finish each uninspired and agonizing sentence. I have an old fashioned analog clock placed on my desk next to my computer. The nonstop ticking will reminds me of how much time I’m wasting, as well as having the pleasant side effect of making time seem to go by slower and driving me insane. Time’s just ticking away until deadline: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

Sorry, it’s getting later and my clock is whittling away the little patience I have left. Which brings us to the third step in being a proficient procrastinator: eliminating all distractions. Expert procrastinators usually have short attention spans, so in preparing to engage in some last minute course work you need to get rid of anything that could potentially distract you. Ten minutes ago I was chatting online, watching Family Guy, eating Chinese food, and checking football scores online. Now I’m sitting at my desk with the lights off and only the sound of my clock ticking time away to keep me company. It’s dreadfully boring, but I know it’s the only way to keep my kitten-like attention span focused on the task at hand.

Most people think procrastinators do all their work last minute, but I’m here to tell you the best procrastinators do at least a little prep work. A procrastinator who spends valuable writing time doing research is a procrastinator who will fail.

“Procrastinators may be similar to nonprocrastinators in that they take charge of their time and try to maximize the efficiency of their time use,” said the procrastination study.

Make sure you’ve done enough background research on your assigned topic to at least BS into a couple pages worth of material. A procrastinator maybe able to turn crap into an A, but even the best in the trade can’t make something from nothing. If you don’t know enough offhand to manufacture an essay, then you’ll need to do at least a little research before hand.

All those tips will work out well and good for some people, but that doesn’t change the ugly truth that not everyone is capable of procrastinating. Procrastination is like pit farting; either you’re born able to do it or you aren’t. It is far too dangerous to be performed without the natural tools to accomplish it. If non adept procrastinators try to put off their work, they’ll ultimately panic and fail.

On the other hand, that does not mean adept procrastinators should take their gifts for granted. It is easy for procrastinators to lose their edge and become ineffective. A good procrastinator never finishes an assignment earlier than they have to for fear of losing their precious gifts, which is another reason I’m writing this article now when it was assigned two weeks ago.

Although many of you will inevitably find your own techniques for procrastinating, the previous tips are all very good rules of thumb that have helped me in a successful career in putting off work. Without them I may have had to, shudder, spend my free time doing homework. Thanks to procrastination I have been able to fully enjoy such hobbies as watching TV and binge drinking. Take to heart the preceding wisdom, my fellow HCC students, and if you’re ever unsure about how to proceed with school work, remember the procrastinators’ motto, “Always put off today what you can half-ass tomorrow.”