Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow

The bad news is, apparently I will always be a procrastinator:

The trick to overcoming procrastination is even simpler. Ready? Here it is:

Get off your fat badonk and stop procrastinating. Right now. No, not after the Gilmore Girls rerun ends. Now now.

Will you do this? No. You will not. You will dabble at the crossword for a while. Later, you might get a yogurt. Eventually, you'll start reading pointless crap on the Internet. You see, you're doing it as we speak! Because: You are lazy.

Understand that this will never, ever change. You will always be lazy, and you will always procrastinate. I know it's tough for you to hear, but it's a harsh truth that you need to internalize.

I'm serious about this. It's bad enough that you're so damn lazy. People like you can't afford to be delusional on top of all your other problems. Oh, I'm sure you imagine yourself growing out of this silly procrastination phase. In the future, you'll get an early jump on projects, work at a steady pace, and always finish ahead of schedule. You'll take the time to do things right—instead of nipping under the wire in a rush of half-assed, flailing chaos.

It's a beautiful dream, my indolent chum. And I'm here to shatter it. Again, I speak from experience in these matters. When I was young, my procrastination was merely debilitating. As I age, it gets far worse.

Take, for instance, this assignment. I first learned of it two weeks ago and, since then, I've gotten really, really superb at Guitar Hero III.

The good news is, I will get really good at Guitar Hero III. Because right now, I'm amazingly terrible. It took me an hour to get through the first song.

(Note to any Atlantic editors who may be reading: this post written at midnight and responsibly scheduled to run first thing in the morning.)

Comments

Structured procrastination! It's really the way to go.

I'd recommend the freedom app for that mac that locks you off of the internet for a quantity of time of your choice, but I suppose that wouldn't be good given your line of work. For everyone else, it works wonders

Posted by Justin | May 14, 2008 9:52 AM

For my New Year's resolution, once, I resolved to stop procrastinating.

Still waiting to get started with that.

Posted by Yancey Ward | May 14, 2008 9:54 AM

I don't understand why procrastination gets such a bad rap.

As long as what needs to get done gets done by the required time who cares that you did it the night before or two weeks before?

I personally am a big fan of procrastination for two reasons.

1) Things change over time, maybe that asignment that is due two weeks from now gets changed, maybe it is even no longer necessary. If I started 2 weeks ago I would have wasted a bunch of time that I will never get back. Who know's maybe I will get hit by a truck between now and when the assignment is due and instead of spending the last two weeks of my life enjoying myself I wasted it working on an assignment that is unecessary now that I am dead.

2) The second reason that is related to the first is that I learn more every day. If I wait till the last minute I have the most possible knowledge to do the task.

As a finance guy I view not procrastinating as similar to exercising an option early (in this case an option to cancel or change the work). As anyone who has studied options theory knows it is almost always suboptimal to exercies an option early.

Posted by eccdogg | May 14, 2008 10:18 AM

My father used to say, "Never do today what you can put off to tomorrow, because you may get hit by a truck and you'll have done all that work for nothing."

Yes, he was joking.

My wife and I met in college. We have a running joke, "Next semester I'm going to get organized!"

We're now in our mid forties. Still saying that.

Some things never change......

Posted by rhinoman | May 14, 2008 10:34 AM

Reminds me of one of my favortie t-shirts: "Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow"

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finalize the paperwork I was meant to have done a month ago...

Posted by Bob | May 14, 2008 10:57 AM

I did keep the New Year's resolution to stop making them.

On topic, I had a boss who was notorious for requesting things on a whim. We quickly learned to ignore him until he asked a second time.

Posted by MarkD | May 14, 2008 1:18 PM

I'm with eccdogg - there are often rational advantages to procrastination. I'll add to his list that things often get cheaper over time, and this is especially true of media (movies, books, videogames).

Failing to meet important deadlines is a problem, but isn't really procrastination. Most good procrastinators will only wait 'til the last minute/hour/day/week if they can actually accomplish their task in a minute/hour/day/week.

Posted by Geoff | May 14, 2008 2:59 PM

What on earth are you doing playing Guitar Hero III?

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.

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Rock Band is a much better way to waste time. Plus, with drums, you can actually fool yourself into thinking you're learning useful musical skills.

Posted by Daniel | May 14, 2008 5:12 PM

"Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now"

- Dr. E.L. Kersten

http://www.despair.com/proc24x30pri.html

Posted by J | May 14, 2008 6:14 PM