We all remember our school vacations when the load of holiday homeworks used to pop out of nowhere and consume our last days in essays and researches and what not. Procrastination, is something that we all have occasionally indulged into and still do. We all are also equally aware of the dangers of delaying work, and yet we somehow enjoy the adventure.
But is it any different for a serial procrastinator?
Let’s have a looksie here-
“Non-Procrastinators Look At Us Differently”
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They say they like to stay on schedule, organize stuff, and stick up to it. In fact even if it’s a full-blown leisure time, they want it all at scheduled times. While us, the procrastinators also like to be rational decision makers, but our flight is co-piloted by instant gratifications like “I wanna have fun RIGHT NOW!” So, it’s not that we don’t ever think about doing stuff on time or being productive, but our decisions are over-driven by a need of instant gratification that WE JUST CAN’T SILENCE. So, when the latter takes over the wheel, we, the procrastinator, actually go like, “Well, let’s just go on a YouTube spiral on the restaurants that have opened near me in the last few months!” The instant leisure time continues to a point where we have convinced ourselves to not schedule anything for the remaining time, because “Hey! isn’t that too ambitious for today?” And then returning back to Zomato to order food because “It’s dinner time already!”
We’re Scared Of The Big Picture
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Procrastinators like what is in the present. We, just like other animals, can’t focus on visualizing the future. Instead, we like attending to the easy and fun part of existence, i.e. the basic needs of rest, food and multiplying one’s species. Unlike heavy rationalizers, procrastinators do not earn their leisure time. Defeating the long-term planning ability of humans, we indulge into enjoying in times that are NOT supposed to be leisure times.
The Procrastinators CANNOT Keep Their Calm But CANNOT Help It Too
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It’s not as if we enjoy the all-leisure time hassle free. There is a lot of hustle going on in our insides. The guilt, the dread, the anxiety of losing it all at once if not grabbed makes us hate ourselves for doing what we do. But we often find ourselves helpless to do anything about it. We may talk a lot about how extremely wrong we are to be so out of schedule, we may indulge into swearing at ourselves too but that’s as far as we can get and never out of it. And trust us, it is all real. The internal drama is much more intense than what we can share out loud.
Panic Date v/s No Panic Date
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It’s like an unforseen event, this panic date! (Ironic, I know) The panic date or what I choose to call it is a time when a procrastinator has to do what they should’ve been done all along. And they do it! All of this is not a pretty ride but the deadlines do work for us. They nearly scare us to death but we really need the panic to get free of the guilt and anxiety all along. That’s the procrastinator’s system, pulling all-nighters and losing mind over a date and time. However, I’m not preaching anyone to become a procrastinator because we ALL are! We all are procrastinating on something in our life. Some of the tasks come to us with a deadline and many without one. Remember that yoga class you had to join two Mondays ago? Remember that office project you had to finish but you never did? We all delay stuff in our life but the ones without deadlines are more private, slower, and less attended to. Here, we don’t chase anything. WE ARE JUST SPECTATING. Until the day comes when all of it comes down. Then, we reflect upon what went wrong only to realize that we are to blame for it. So, if we all procrastinate in some way or the other, it’s time we reflect upon why we blame ‘procrastinators’ for being productive only with deadlines?
At the end I’d like to say that although it’s quite satisfying and in fact a big dopamine-ic rush to put off work and enjoy for a little while, it’s best to attend to what we are procrastinating upon and communicate it to someone we confide in. Because if procrastination is something none of us can escape from, we all are equally sharing that guilt and self-hatred from being unproductive. Not only people who we share this feeling with can help us keep a check on it but we can also help each other in fighting the panic and persistent frustration.
