Disclaimer: I might be a habitual procrastinator and I might get more lucky close calls than I deserve, but 99% of my deadlines are met. I’m a professional, kids, don’t try this at home.
When thumbing through self-help guides in a bookstore, I like reading their titles and joking to myself of how pretentious some (not all) of these authors can be. But regardless of how unhelpful some of their books are, because these writers took the time to write a work of publishable quality, I am still probably the bigger joke.
Which is why I have always been hesitant to dole out advice. If you ever receive any advice from me, be it in this blog or in person, take it with a grain of salt and use your own judgment. It is under my belief that each person generally knows what he or she should be doing, but no one really wants to put in the effort to change (myself included). You already know what you should be doing. Advice should only be a nudge in the right direction, not an entire redefinition of your life.
I will not tell you to stop procrastinating, because I would be a hypocrite. Admittedly, my habits are nothing I’m proud of, but they work and I’ve learned to leave well enough alone. Thus, I also will not tell you that procrastinating is wrong, because if you are anything like me, you will know that there is almost nothing more powerfully motivating than last minute panic.
I usually do this with blog posts every night.
Since the college decision period is slowly winding down to a close, I’d like to have offered some advice on applying and meeting deadlines. I’ll do a little of that at the end, but I am probably not the best person to offer that type of advice.
Instead, I will offer three observations about procrastination derived from basic mathematics which may help you to become better at this discipline:
1. The amount of time you need to spend on an assignment is directly proportional to the time remaining prior to the deadline…
…within reasonable limits. Have you ever tried to solve 30 integrals two minutes before class starts? Challenge accepted, anyone?
But seriously, you will work faster if your grade depended on you finishing those integrals in the thirty minutes before class starts. This direct relationship means that the more time available before the deadline, the greater your tendency to drag on the time to do the assignment.
For the very first time, One Doodle a Day Blog features a diagram/chart showing a positive correlation. Super dorky and extra fun!
The power of using time to pressure yourself takes great responsibility. Use it wisely.
2. Don’t rely on luck each time like an idiot. Base your decisions on historic patterns from teachers/professors and extrapolate from there.
You may pray for a close call or beg for a deadline extension or even more reliably, you can fake a fever to stay home from school. While the latter is usually only applicable to elementary and middle school (primary school) students, it is important to realize that close calls are not as random as you may think.
Among my teachers (occasionally professors too), some are more likely to extend deadlines than others. Pay attention to their personalities and patterns of how they assign their homework. Judge accordingly and make educated hypotheses.
Just remember, you gamble at your own risk.
3. Never procrastinate everything. Diversify what you procrastinate on to increase the probability of success.
I am a firm practitioner of procrastination because first, I’ve gotten decent at it, and second, I do not procrastinate everything. You increase your chances of success if you spread out your workload. Think of it like having a diverse financial portfolio — if one investment falls through, everything else is there to back you up.
For me, the prime example would be college applications, since I could re-purpose multiple essays and had an array of applications to submit.
Sub-point A: How to not diversify procrastination:
Sure, some (read that as: “all but one”) of my college applications were submitted the day they were due…and some thirty minutes before they were due…and two of them at 11:58 PM, a few seconds before they were due. But I could do so only because the majority of my essays were already written, and the only step remaining was the final hours of editing and fitting the prompts. Still, it was awful pressure waiting for the submission to occur. Don’t do it. TL;DR: It is a bad idea to clump four applications in one day.
Sub-point B: How to diversify procrastination:
The last application I submitted over winter break was a mixture of essays from all the applications I had finished before. I only had thirty minutes to fill out the application before 11:59 PM, with only one of the short essays done. I needed to act fast. Desperately file-searching through my documents and pulling up old essays, I began editing everything. Because of the number of essays that I’d amassed, it was easy to find something that could partially fit the prompts.
Nope, can’t draw laptops correctly.
Two minutes before the deadline, I submitted it. That was my Caltech application.
And I was accepted.
…
I did not dramatically separate that Caltech line to show off like a mic drop. I did it to make the point that the “art” of procrastination is a derivation of the efforts that I built over time, even though I wish I had finished it earlier. The Caltech application I submitted pulled essays from more than five other essays that I had written for applications. While on the surface, it seemed like a hastily put together application (not denying it), the application was also the final product from all the essays I had written before.
I could never have pulled it off if one of my best friends and I had not spent day and night mass-producing essays for all of our regular action applications over the course of five days in winter break. It was the most intensive writing workshop that I had ever subjected myself to.
It sounds noble and all, but this writing endeavor only started because I procrastinated and the experience was not noble and was not great. My friend texted me that Tuesday, Dec. 29th, three days before the main Jan. 1st applications were due (paraphrased):
“Hey, did you start on your applications yet?”
…Oops. I texted back (also paraphrased):
“Nope. Will be doing that now.”
Hilarity ensued, followed by desperation. The cycle that follows repeats over and over for several days:
- We brainstorm ideas of what we could write about.
- Then, we write our own essays independently.
- Finally, we would exchange our essays back and forth to offer suggested edits through Google Docs.
- Lather, rinse, repeat, all day, every day until midnight for five consecutive days.
In retrospect, it sounds like a great story because of the happy ending. But again, it’s because of luck that I don’t necessarily deserve and luck that I never expect again. I was lucky that the site did not crash. I was lucky that my friend managed to call me when she did. I was lucky that all these factors managed to work. I am incredibly lucky and incredibly thankful each time.
Again, I am not endorsing procrastination, but I am suggesting that in my experience, procrastination works, if you selectively and rationally weigh out your options. Regardless, if I had to do it all over again, I would have preferred more time to think and would have liked to have slept more those several nights. And while procrastinating means play before work, the “play” aspect was always tainted with guilt for not doing what I should have been doing (okay, the movies I watched were kind of worth it).
In college, I’m guessing I will never get away with this level of procrastination again. But it boils down to the crux of my observations: proceed with caution, and you’ll generally be fine.
If caution in college is finishing assignments as soon as possible, so be it. I’ve gotten way too many close calls with deadlines already so I’m hoping that college will fix me.
But then again, I said the same thing before high school.
…Oops.
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ADDENDUM: It’s 3AM in the morning, and CPW is tomorrow. Finished packing up, (finally) and somewhat pleased my mom, who still worries incessantly (I’m secretly glad sometimes, but don’t tell her). I won’t be updating the blog until Sunday night, when I get back from Boston, but I will keep up the daily doodling, as promised. I prefer scanning the index cards, which will have to wait until I get back.
Super big thank you to everyone who’s been following and reading my blog posts. You are awesome!
The Doodler Process 