The Art of Procrastination

I am a procrastinator by birth. I have a tendency to put off as much work as possible for as long as possible. Rarely do I get assignments completed until the night before they are due. In addition, the more important the assignment, the later I get around to doing it.

Of course I am not the only procrastinator on earth, and every individual has their own unique method of delaying the inevitable. I tend to just avoid doing the work by doing something else, such as making such scientific discoveries as how many games of solitaire I can win in an hour. Or, if a computer is not available, I will leaf through a magazine until I have read every word contained within it.

When I was younger and had to clean my room, I would put every puzzle in my room together. If questioned as to the legitimacy of such an action, I would claim to be checking for missing pieces. I assure you, there was rarely a question of whether a piece was missing, since I only took the puzzles out when the room was being cleaned.

The key to successfully procrastinating is to always have a reasonable excuse for whatever it is you are doing. If you are counting toothpicks it is because you want to make sure the company didn't try to cheat you by putting only 248 in the box instead of 250. When you choose to repeatedly watch the sand in an egg time fall down, it is because you want to make sure they fall at the same rate every time. And when you desire to know the amount of time it would take to run a marker dry, it is to determine whether or not you are getting more if you buy the more expensive brand.

Pure curiosity is another excuse for procrastination. With this method, you must have a long and confusing link to the activity from the project you were supposed to be doing. For instance, if you were supposed to empty the dishwasher but were caught stacking the glasses into a pyramid, you would need to say something like you were putting the plasses away and noticed they didn't all fit unless they were stacked and so you wanted to know if there was a better way of stacking them, and then you wanted to know how high the pyramid would be if you stacked them all up, and so on until you have completely confused the person who was foolish enough to ask in the first place. When you completely master the art of confusing your listener, you will have the ability to make them forget not only what they asked, but also what you were supposed to be doing in the first place.

It is also important to know how to fake an activity. If you are told to vacuum the floor in the living room, take the vacuum into the room and turn it on, then sit on the couch and read that magazine article you've been dying to read about your favorite movie star. Be sure to listen for anyone who might wander into the room and pay attention to the amount of time you've been in the room, because if it is a small room and you have had the vacuum on for half and hour, there is definitely a problem.

Time is an important factor in proper procrastination. Always know exactly how long it takes to complete an activity so you can make the most of the time you should be spending on whatever project you were told to do. You should also know your limits. If you must have eight hours of sleep to function, you obviously can't stay up until one o'clock in the morning working on that paper which is due.

In addition, when working on a school project, always know the teacher's policy on late assignments. If a teacher will take papers late, then it is sometimes the best option to put off doing the assignment until a later date, when you have more time and aren't so busy e-mailing your friend about the latest gossip.

Procrastination is an art to be mastered by anyone who desires to get less done in more time. However, once mastered, it is an art of which you can be proud. With it you can spend more time doing those little tasks you have always wanted to do, like figure out how many apples can fit in a bathtub full of water before the water starts to overflow, or finding out exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop. And in case you were wondering, it's 246.