We all procrastinate. Some of us basically do it as a job. Procrastination is living on the edge for people whose “edge” is nearly being late to something. It’s a small way for all of us to tell the universe “it’s fuck this shit o’clock!” before we inevitably go back to actually doing what we needed to do and picking up all the important shit we just let fly across the room.
How do you procrastinate with the best of the best though? It takes dedication (or lack thereof), an aversion to hard work and a penchant for making a good excuse. You have to have the right stuff to do the wrong thing, and everyone has to believe that, despite your increasingly aggressive deadline flexing, you are getting the job done with style.
In short, you need to be a goddamn superhero.
There are a few trade secrets I’ve honed over the years though. Here’s a few of them:
Know your Limitations
If you know the project you have to finish by Tuesday will take you at least 12 hours to get done, don’t push it to the hair trigger end. You need a game plan. If you know how fast you work, and that speed is somewhere around “faster than the Flash on a coke bender,” then procrastinate on. If it isn’t, get working earlier, or find a way to delay the deadline. There’s always a way to tamp down expectations when things get ugly with a project, so find a way to warm your professor or boss’ cold, black heart and get them to give you a bit more time. Theatrical experience helps here.
Keep The Dream Alive
Procrastination time should be used for the least productive, most self-fulfilling experiences you can find. Got a major paper due? Marathon the Star Wars series. Massive coding project? Play Fallout 4 to completion, twice. Big family event that requires a lot of planning? Re-organize your Spotify party playlists for 2016. The important thing is to take the time for you, rather than the things you should be doing. It’s like selfish zen buddhism.
Master the Art of the Fadeaway Explanation
In many cases, people will want updates on the thing you’re procrastinating on. Give them vague answers, long term estimates and as much technical jargon as you can to make it sound like progress is being made, even if it isn’t. The art of procrastination is tied into the same school as the art of bullshit. Both, together, will bring you the closest thing to harmony you can find in this life, because everyone knows people who do things way ahead of time suck, and we hate them.
When All Else Fails, Use The Nuclear Option
I don’t mean an actual nuclear option, unless you’re a nuclear engineer, in which case I do. You shouldn’t resort to that though, because no one wants WWIII because some asshole hadn’t finished season 1 of Jessica Jones yet. The nuclear option I mean is the one that all good procrastinators know: caffeine and other performance enhancing methods of staying awake and getting the job done. If this were the productivity olympics, you’d be getting shamed like the entire Russian track and field team, but it isn’t. You can feel free to use whatever methods necessary to make that deadline, because you’re in the game to win by any means necessary. You’re like a productivity Terminator, showing up just in time to keep the world from exploding into ruin, but not soon enough to make it happen without a bunch of chaos and disorder along the way. At the end of the long, uncomfortable night, you’ll stand victorious with paper or project in hand, and much like the Terminator, you’ll be back the next time you have shit due that you don’t want to do.