I'm not sure if I have justified my procrastination on here before, though. It's definitely been mentioned before, but not necessarily justified...
So why not justify it now?
But first, a brief history of my relationship with procrastination:
The thing about procrastination is that it is just so natural. It just happens, and I was therefore exposed to it at a very early age. In fact, it's healthy for young kids to go out and play and not do homework day in and day out. Back in the gradeschool days, putting homework and projects off in order to live a happy, healthy childhood is hardly seen as the vice of procrastination. Indeed there are many people advocating for more childhood play time like recess and minimizing the amounts of homework that young kids have to do. They promote these things under the guise of better well-being, mental and physical health, social and attention skills, and just general happiness. We should probably take these things more seriously.
Anyway, early on life was filled with petty procrastination that coagulated every now and again into late-night science fair projects and history presentations. You know, the kind that you helped your parents procrastinate until the night before it's due, even though you've known about it for at least a month.
This foundation gave way to middle school, where procrastination became revered as an important skill. I boasted my abilities as a self-proclaimed "pro-crastinator" (I did indeed crastinate professionally) and juggled my classes using many late nights and productivity diluted by social media and instant messaging. It of course only got worse the more I got away with it. Good times.
In high school, I added the skill of more constant sleep deprivation to this aspect of life. There was also more of a shift in these years as my responsibilities were put off, not in order to play outside or indulge in frivolities, but because of the sheer load of productive things I was requiring of myself. This included normal responsible things like a ton of classes, as well as more fun activities like soccer, lacrosse, and choir. I definitely don't regret any of it, but it meant that many nights I wouldn't get home until 9 or 10 pm, and then I could get started on homework. I quickly learned how to spend nights cycling between naps and homework, how to cram productivity into the wee hours of the mornings, and how to maximize the use of down time traveling or at practices and rehearsals.
Things in college are, of course, much different. I don't have such a varied load anymore, in terms of my extra-curriculars and all. I've largely switched out the structured sports and music for an intense class load and involvement in a handful of related clubs. I'm still in the category of procrastinating not for fun, but out of necessity to get more pressing assignments done first, even when that means putting off another important task. But developments such as these have introduced a new justification for my procrastinations.
Mostly because my responsibilities are so focused on one aspect of life (engineering homework...and nothing else), my need for constructive breaks -- things like exercise, hobbies, and maybe even the occasional social encounter -- can much more often fall under the category of 'for sanity' rather than 'for fun'. Not sure if this is an improvement. It can be hard to do these things regularly, both due to the schedule and the fact that I get anxious sometimes if I'm not actively working on homework. But it's still something that is important to me, to do as often as possible.
Because of that, when I find myself with a smidgen of free time (read: non-panicked time; time where I have more than I will need to accomplish the tasks that are due immediately), I have an important decision to make: I can either take advantage of this time and use it to get ahead on things so that they won't be so stressful later on, or I can actually do something fun, as if to treat it as actual free time.
Usually the level of my motivation is the deciding factor here.
But when the motivation doesn't automatically tell me what to do, I can justify it with some logical thinking.
I know that things like homework are going to get done. There is no way that those things will get pushed off indefinitely and just never get done. They have deadlines and consequences imposed by outside forces. So the question is not if they will get done, but when.
Now, in terms of using time, I could use two hours to my enjoyment through reading or exercise or something of the type, and then spend two hours doing homework. I could do both of those activities in any order that I want, and at the end of the day, I will have spent two hours on each. It's a pretty good deal. So if they both get done, there's really not much importance as to which goes first.
Because I know that the homework will get done but my hobbies or other tasks of secondary priority don't have the same guarantee, it seems perfectly logical to do things like write or meet up with friends or kick a soccer ball around for a while when I know that there will be adequate time to do the homework later.
Mind you, this doesn't happen often, so I feel even more justified in justifying it.
Plus it gives me an opportunity to show myself that I am more than just a homeworking robot engineering student, which is an important feat.
So we give procrastination a bad rap. It can very easily become a vice and rob you of time and opportunity, but I think that if it is used with control, it can become a tool of sorts to balance priorities and time management and personal well-being. It is important to spend time productively, and to spend down time wisely, not vapidly. You can probably judge whether your procrastination is justifiable by whether or not you make any personal gains from whatever you've done instead of working on that long to-do list we all have.
Whether you decide to tackle your tasks head on or procrastinate productively, don't ever stop living the most that you can.
After all, "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
-Marthe Troly-Curtin
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