Ever looked at yourself and said, “Hey, I think something is wrong with me,” and then just decided to continue not doing anything about it?
Hello, this is me on the reg.
I am a severe procrastinator. I have been all my life. It’s weird how I’ve recognized this fact since high school, but I’ve never really done much to change it. Case in point: I legitimately did my taxes on April 14th—the day before the deadline—and that stress had been eating me up for weeks. But the second I finished, I felt an insane sense of relief.
There will be two different types of people who read this. One group will hear that and immediately start thinking of all the things that would “help” me get organized—calendar apps, task lists, reminders, a cute little sticky note pad shaped like a cat’s head, and so on.
And then there’s the other group—the ones who get it. They feel the same way I do and have for years.
With the experiment to ditch my smartphone in full swing, I’ve had to fill my time with “extracurriculars” a lot more than I used to. Aside from this blog, I also have a personal diary I jot in whenever I’m feeling particularly bored or tempted to turn on my iPad.
I can’t say it’s been a revolution for my mental health—or my procrastination—but I did notice something. The last time I forced myself to open the journal, I was basically just writing for writing’s sake, but I ended up jotting down what I planned to do over the next few hours: “probably go on a walk and do some photo stuff. Dishes and laundry are piling up too.”
It wasn’t meant to be a goals list or anything—just thoughts that happened to cross my mind.
Funny thing though—after writing them down, I actually went on to do those things. And it didn’t feel like I was checking boxes off a chore list.
So why not change? Why consistently live with the anxiety this brings? I don’t really know, to be honest. There is likely some reason for all of this buried under a couple months of cognitive therapy. But I will say I genuinely feel like this behavior was only reinforced by all the schooling I had growing up. There were a million homework assignments that went uncompleted until literal minutes before class that I effectively “faked” my way through, and I still made passing grades. C’s and D’s mostly, but that didn’t matter, because there was a glitch in my high school’s listing system, and I ended up printed on the honor roll list every month. My granny was so proud of me!
A note though: procrastination has also, in lots of cases, saved my ass. I can’t explain to people who don’t regularly put off every single task in their life all the freaking time what kind of superpower it is to be in the throes of a deeply delayed “project” and what type of ingenuity and creativity pour out of you in those moments.
An example: I was the best man in my best friend’s wedding in August of 2023. He let me know that I was, in fact, his best man in September of 2022—11 months prior. I maybe sat down to type out my speech twice leading up to the wedding and got down some terrible, corny stuff.
Skip ahead to two days before the wedding. What I have is hot garbage, and my friends and family will cringe into themselves if they hear this. I am now in panic mode. We have to start from scratch—and do not be fooled into thinking this isn’t important to me. This is just the life of a procrastinating dummy. This wedding is very important to the groom, and very important to me.
In this moment, I am imbued with the spirit of some dead poet. I am bleeding ink incarnate. I write what I genuinely felt in my heart—some of the most authentic writing I’ve ever done in my life for this speech—in a matter of two hours. And the nuttiness doesn’t stop there. I can’t even be bothered to finish this speech. Oh no, I leave the ending blank—because I know when I’m in panic-procrastinator mode in front of this large wedding, I am going to say some existential shit. I’m gonna have to come up with something.
And I did. I blacked out and I think I spoke from my heart, and I think it went well…
Procrastinating has never really been “reasonable” for me. And yes, I choose it daily.
But there are moments where I feel like it’s defined me.
And I think I like me.
-Wyatt
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