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procrastination: A brief history of wasting time.

Letter to a Young ProcrastinatorSome last-minute advice from a veteran slacker.

By Seth Stevenson
Updated Friday, May 16, 2008, at 4:46 PM ET

Read more from Slate's special issue on procrastination.

Seth Stevenson chatted online with readers about this article. Read the transcript.

Dear chronically procrastinating young person,

Slate has asked me to offer you a few words of advice—as I, too, am a procrastinator. Always have been. In college, I'd start 10-page papers after midnight on the day they were due. Half my memories of this period involve screaming at my printer to print faster, ripping the pages from its maw, and then sprinting to my professor's office with moments to spare, sweat streaming down my face.

Why did I subject myself to so much stress, instead of starting my work earlier like "normal" people do? Well, you've no doubt heard all manner of theories regarding the root cause of procrastination. Fear of failure. Crippling perfectionism. Abnormally low type-2 phloxiplaxitus levels.

I'm here to tell you that it was none of these things. The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I'm lazy. Extremely lazy.

Don't judge, pal—you're lazy, too. It's why you procrastinate. When there's a difficult, disagreeable, or tedious chore that needs to get done, guess what? You don't want to do it. So you don't. Until you have to.

It's just that simple, my slothful friend. And guess what else? 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. Now I'm awake in the middle of the night, facing a deadline that's hours away, and I'm guzzling caffeine and just getting started. Crikey, I haven't done a lick of research! My editor specifically asked me to find historical examples of procrastination. Hold on, gonna Google a couple things …

OK, back now. It turns out the ancient Greeks may well have procrastinated. And Leonardo da Vinci left a whole stack of unfinished projects. Also—this is conjecture on my part, but seems plausible—I'm guessing the people of Pompeii spent their final moments wishing they'd been a bit more on the ball about fleeing that bubbling volcano.

"But Seth," you interject, as I take a Rubik's Cube from my desk drawer and begin fiddling with it, "what about that kid in my econ section who's always on top of things? He makes an outline of his paper two weeks in advance, writes a rough draft, then does further research and revisions. Couldn't I be more like that kid if I put my mind to it?"

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Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate.
Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

For a round-up of responses to this and other Procrastination articles, see the current Fraywatch column.

Comments from the Fray

This is the poem

of a procrastinator.

I'm starting it now;

I'll finish it later.

--Alphabet soup

(To reply, click here)

This is the year of the procrastinator--2008. I am pushing for National Procrastination Day to be moved to August 8. 08/08/08. If you say it out loud, it says Oh, wait, Oh wait, Oh wait. Maybe somebody will read this and help me with my movement. But it'll probably get postponed, anyway.

--bedubya

(To reply, click here)

I'm a workaholic ...and I like to pretend I think it's a character flaw too, just like Seth pretends procrastination is. But I don't really believe it is. Actually I brag about it, kind of like Seth makes procrastination sound creative and fun and whatever the opposite of "uptight and anal retentive" is. And my pretense is BS too.

--Mikestand

(To reply, click here)

(5/20)

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