Procrastination

How can something be wrong when it feels so right? Case in point: procrastination. There was a time in my high school career when I blamed the internet for my uncontrollable bouts of procrastination, but the internet can't take all the flack. But, it can take some. I sit in front of the computer, cursor in my word processor blinking at the top of a blank page, waiting for my brilliant insight into Kierkegaard. But, at the bottom of the screen, the tiny firefox wrapped around the globe beckons. "I'll only take a few minutes," I say, knowing this is a lie. Half an hour later, I have mastered the latest addicting game, and my paper is no closer to be done, or even contemplated. It's just so hard to work when there's an entire world of games and stupid photos and blogs just a click away.

I get a certain satisfaction while working on things that I've actually been assigned to do. Sadly, it is nearly impossible to conjure of memory of this feeling when procrastination calls. Its sounds is just a little bit sweeter. I figured I could break my habit of procrastinating by turning off my computer monitor while working on other things, but I have instead merely discovered that I am easily distracted. "I've been meaning to start that book. I'll just read the first chapter," I think. And thus, I begin the vicious cycle all over again.

I have to fight the part of me that says that all I would do with the time saved by working industriously is do what I do while I'm procrastinating. And there's the fact that work somehow always expands to fill time. So, why not just have a smaller window of time to work in? It's the same part of my brain that tells me to eat the chocolate cake before dinner. There's a problem with both of these. Even if I procrastinate before I work or eat the cake before I eat dinner, I want to dick around after I work and eat cake again after I finish dinner. That just leaves me not sleeping as much and consuming an abnormal amount of chocolate cake. Gluttony logic is so convincing in theory! It argues a very strong point when you want to believe in it, anyway.

Perhaps procrastination leads to indolence, and, using wet noodles, should be beaten from children. But perhaps not. I have come to accept that, as a procrastinator, I am almost definitely incurable. Thus, it follows that many other procrastinators are likewise lost causes. We spend our lives in idle discourse and regret it afterward, but it is indeed beautiful in the moment.