The Whitridge Voice

pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-|
Noun
The action of delaying or postponing something: The first tip is to avoid procrastination.

Who would have thought that after decades of struggle with procrastination, the dictionary, of all places, would hold the solution?  Avoid procrastination, so elegant in its simplicity.

While we’re at it, let’s make sure obese people avoid overeating, depressed people avoid apathy, and someone please tell beached whales that they should avoid being out of the ocean.

No, “avoid procrastination” is only good advice for fake procrastinators—those people that are like, “I totally go on Facebook a few times every day at work—I’m such a procrastinator!” The same people that will say to a real procrastinator something like, “Just don’t procrastinate and you’ll be fine.”

The thing that neither the dictionary nor fake procrastinators understand is that for a real procrastinator, procrastination isn’t optional—it’s something they don’t know how to escape.

In college, the sudden unbridled freedom spelled disaster for many of my friends and classmates—many students I knew did nothing, ever, for any reason. Obviously it was necessary to complete papers from time to time, students would consistently be doing these the night before, until they realized they could just write them throughout the night.  To make it worse they realized they could actually start them in the early morning on the day they were due, where then I saw students frantically trying to get this work done right before class. I was never a big procrastinator in college as it gave and continues to give me anxiety to not have things done when I am expected to have them done for school. I probably procrastinated once with a paper I had due right before Spring break because  in my mind I was already on vacation, an experience that ended with me in the campus doctor’s office learning that lack of blood sugar was the reason my hands had gone numb and curled up against my will, so it wasn’t a total loss. (I did get the paper in eventually—no, it was not good.)

The “Dark Playground” is a place every procrastinator knows well. It’s a place where leisure activities occur at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn’t actually fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety and dread.  Sometimes the “Rational Decision-Maker” puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisurely  things, and since the “Instant Gratification Monster” sure as hell isn’t going to let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where all the characters lose.

Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren’t actually difficult to do — you have the talent and skills to accomplish them — you just avoid starting them for one reason or another.  I once read about a “two minute rule”, the goal was to make it easier to start the things we should be doing. If it takes two minutes or less to do, do it now. For example, washing dishes after dinner, taking out the trash, cleaning up clutter, sending that email, etc. Obviously everything we do will not take two minutes or less, but everything we do can take two minutes or less to start and that is what we need to start doing. Usually procrastinating is driven by  fear that the task is a lot more difficult or time consuming than it actually is, but once we get started we get on a roll. Take the two minutes to at least begin the task. Tell yourself “I am going to just start this for two minutes and then stop only if I have to. Most of the time, once you get going, you are happy you started and you keep going until it’s complete
My advice is to use the two minute rule and you will see that you will procrastinate less. Try it for a week or two and if it doesn’t work for you, continue procrastinating away. I found it to be a helpful tool for me and I urge you to give it the “old college try”, and I don’t mean the kind of college try my classmates were using.