How to Procrastinate | Teen Ink

How to Procrastinate

May 9, 2018
By chrischao123 BRONZE, Albertson, New York
chrischao123 BRONZE, Albertson, New York
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Do you want to risk doing poorly in school? Do you want to constantly feel the pressure of the clock? Do you want that rush of adrenaline when you are still working at four o'clock in the morning? If you said yes to any of these, then you should consider using this valuable tool: procrastination; it may seem like a complicated task at first, but once you have learned it, you will never forget it.


The first step in procrastination and the easiest one to do is to obtain an assignment from one of your teachers in school. If you do not have a school to go to, then these steps will not apply to you. However, do not pay attention to the teacher when she is speaking about what to do or else the rest of the steps will be unachievable. Some suggestions of what to do instead of listening to your teacher are to doodle in your notes, zone out and daydream, or simply ask to go to the bathroom when you are actually going to the cafeteria to talk with friends.
Now that you have no idea of what the assignment is, you are ready to continue the process. The next step is to completely forget about the assignment that was recently given to you, and focus on your personal life. There are no restrictions of what you can or cannot focus on with the exception of school work. Personally, I would recommend focusing on the various forms of social media such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter; utilizing these platforms will help you not only forget about your work, but will also waste so much of your time that if you do recall your schoolwork, you will barely have any time to do it. Depending on the time given to do these assignments, this process may range from three hours all the way to an entire month.


You may experience periods of remembering your assignments; however, do not worry. All you have to do is stare at your blank document page for a solid minute, open a new browser, enter the url of a website you enjoy using, and put off your assignment until tomorrow. After doing so, repeat this crucial step in order to fully complete the task of procrastination. Repeat this step until it is the day before the assignment is due; an entirely different approach will be taken.


When you remember about your assignment just before the due date, it is common for many people to panic about the lack of work they have done. Due to the fact that you were not paying attention to your teacher when the task was explained, you must next ask friends about what to do for the assignment. You may have to ask more than one since many of your friends may have also participated in this irresistible practice. After acknowledging your task, get to work and do the task. This may take all night, but do not worry about falling asleep; there is this magical elixir where the person who consumes it will be able to withstand the harsh feeling of exhaustion. You can either purchase this beverage at a local Starbucks, or you can assemble it yourself with the aid of a coffee machine.


With your trustee drink by your side, you can now continuously carry out your task at hand. Depending on how high you want your grade to be, you may want to use an equally irresistible practice known as plagiarism to speed up your process. Simply use the internet to look up previous works on your task, copy and paste the work onto a google doc or word doc, and submit it as your own. There is a 100% chance of being penalized for this action if the doc is submitted on the internet, so have caution when plagiarizing. If you do not want to risk the likely chances of failing, then you actually have to use your brain to do the job at hand.


One person, however, does not have enough brain power to finish in time; you will need the help of your friends with a diverse set of skills to aid each aspect of assignment with maximum capacity. Navigate your way to the Skype icon on your desktop and request for a group call in your group chat. Start the call and wait as your team of scholars joins at your side to at the race to beat the clock. After two and a half minutes of staying on task, you must now go off tangent. The subject of debate can be anything you please - sports, gossip, how loathed school is - as long as it does not concern the completion of your assignment. Throughout the call you will complain about the idiocy of the assignment; this is a common side effect of Skyping. A quick glance at the time would make you realize the fact that you wasted 2 hours and only have 6 hours left until school starts. The standard response is to leave the group chat and proceed with your work.


If you do not want to stay up until the next morning doing your project, ignore spelling and grammar and do the bare minimums required for your project. If you would like to receive an acceptable grade, procrastination may not be right for you; however, if you experience this situation, an all-nighter is necessary. After working under pressure with only a limited amount of time, a rush of adrenaline is common to have, and you must utilize this boost of energy to your advantage in finishing your assignment.


It is notable that there exists a side-effect of procrastination: blame. You will blame your teacher for not giving enough time to complete the assignment; you will blame your friends for distracting you and preventing you from ever getting the assignment started; you will blame your other classes for giving too much homework and exams; you will blame your coach for holding practice 30 minutes later than it should have been; you will blame your phone or computer for providing too many distractions in the form of social media; you will blame all of these variables for the end result, except for yourself. Despite having ample time to do well on your assignment, you were under a time constraint. Despite initiating the conversation with your friends over text, they were distracting. Despite choosing to take 6 AP classes this year, you weren’t supposed to have too much other work. Despite the fact that your participation in sports has nothing to do with your academics, that 30 minutes of extra practice could have been used to “do your assignment.” Despite technology providing its users with the opportunity to complete work far more efficiently such as Google Drive for easy organization, the internet for quick access to valuable information, etc, you were forced to use Instagram and Facebook instead. 


The next step is the most difficult of all and requires extreme motivation; you must keep your eyes open after only getting a maximum of one hour of sleep so that you can attend class. After fighting through the urge to close your eyes, you must go to school, and finally submit your assignment that worked tirelessly to complete. If you forgot the print out your project, find a time in your busy schedule to go to the library and print it out. If you do not have any time to do so, make up an excuse to your teacher, and secretly go to the library to print it out. Last but not least, you must spend the next few weeks worrying about this assignment and what grade you will receive. It is very common to think about kicking yourself for wasting your time, and I do not blame you. 


This may seem like a terrible and inefficient method of doing an assignment, and although that is correct, you will not be able to stop this practice. Teachers will continually advise you not to use this practice, but it is as addictive as nicotine; once you are on track, you will never go back.


The author's comments:

After observing my peers participate in this counterproductive practice and personally participating in it as well, I found this piece to be a great opportunity to convey the sheer absurdity of procrastination through satire.


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