The art of procrastination: A guide for beginners

I have many life-skills but by far the one that I have perfected the most is the art of procrastination. Putting off important tasks just doesn’t happen by chance, it takes true diligence to put off until tomorrow things that I should be accomplishing today. I always start my days with a mental list of things that I need to accomplish. Today I should be catching up on reading 150+ pages for class tomorrow, cleaning my house, and going to the gym. Actually that list has been in my head every single day I have woken up this past week but I am sad to say that I have not accomplished any of it. Today I woke up late, barely made it on time for my annual physical, and then perused the aisles of Bed, Bath and Beyond. After I finally made it back home I downloaded the new Taylor Swift song which I’ve been meaning to do for days. So all in all it was a successful morning of accomplishing things, just not things that I actually needed to accomplish.

I am a master at putting off going to the doctor. I have repeatedly protested my doctor’s attempts to get me to show up for my annual physical. I only went this morning because my doctor wouldn’t take my word for it that I am perfectly healthy, and refused to refill any of my prescriptions until I actually made an appearance in her office. Okay so she was probably a little peeved that I was several months late on my physical and that she had to resort to drastic measures to make me get a check-up, but I swear if given a few more months I might have thought about making an appointment. I am also several months overdue on my annual pap-smear. I made an appointment 2 weeks ago but accidentally slept through it and keep forgetting to call the office to re-schedule. I absolutely hate going to the doctor’s and will try to self-diagnose and treat myself at home. I have been taping my right ankle together with wraps for years now and I am pretty sure I have a stress fracture in my left foot, but I would rather amputate my leg than actually go to the doctor’s office.

Going to my annual appointment this morning completely threw off my day of attempting to accomplish tasks. After my appointment I made a detour to Starbucks to get a giant coffee and then headed off to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get a new blender. Getting a blender was not on my list of tasks that I needed to complete today, but my Nutri-Bullet broke yesterday and clearly eating healthy trumps cleaning my house. And you can’t just go into BB&B and buy a blender. You have to look at all the other things that you don’t need but for some reason feel compelled to buy. So a new blender, a pack of jumbo straws, and a Turbie twist hair towel later, I left the store feeling like I had at least spent my morning accomplishing something.

I have a ranking system for my daily tasks. School clearly takes priority but how am I supposed to study if my house is a mess? They always say that you should have an un-cluttered work environment when attempting to study so first item on the to-do list is clearly cleaning. Unfortunately the first thing that needs to be cleaned is my DVR. It is 84% full right now and I have 20 episodes of “How I met your mother” to watch before I can erase anything. I caught up on a few episodes while attempting to de-clutter my living room, and then decided that I needed to take a dance break. I often take singing and dancing breaks from cleaning and studying and today I just needed to dance it out to Taylor Swift’s new song which I have been meaning to download for about a week. So I can check three things off my list this afternoon: clearing my DVR, downloading “Shake it off” and taking a dance break. I also think my dance breaks count as exercise so I guess I have accomplished four things.

Every semester I start out by promising myself that this is a new start and I am definitely not going to procrastinate completing my reading assignments. This usually lasts through half of the first week and then I decide I have other things that need to be accomplished before I complete my reading. Doesn’t everyone need to compulsively clean out their dryer lint trap before they study? I have this theory that the longer I put off completing my school work the more adrenaline I feel when I study. Somehow studying in a state of panic actually helps me to do really well on tests. I am that student who looks on the verge of a panic attack flipping through the last few pages of my reading as tests are being handed out, but I actually do really well in school and I think it’s because I am such a terrible procrastinator. I don’t think I would do as well if I actually made notecards, and high-lighted the pages and actually studied without taking a dance break.

So it’s now turning into late afternoon and I still have time to hit the gym and at least complete some of my reading. I really think that today is the day that I actually am going to get a few things checked off my list because last night I could barely sleep thinking about all the reading I still have left to complete. Also, I managed to clean half the house and I can still do laundry while I study. So that’s completing two tasks at the same time. I’m an excellent multi-tasker. Plus I have completed one blog for the week, and although it wasn’t on my to-do list, it still counts as accomplishing something. So now that I have spent most of the morning and early afternoon procrastinating everything I was supposed to actually accomplish today I will now attempt to open up my book and study…although I do feel a need to take another dance break first.