Why You Don't Need to Stop Procrastinating // 9 Reasons

It's Friday (you came here to check the day, right?) and I hope you're really excited about it and have a weekend of doing tons of exciting things or nothing at all or somewhere wonderful in between ahead of you.  

I, for one, am ready for the week to be over.  It's been kind of rough.

This week's events included, among other things, basketball tryouts.  It's the time of year when most of the girls that I play volleyball with during the fall begrudgingly switch to long shorts and high tops and sprinting and I resign myself to winter of making and eating cookies running the hallways or hitting the weight room and watching a lot of basketball games.  And even though almost every female basketball player I know will readily relate the horrors of running sprints or zig zag dribbling (whatever that is), every year I find this tiny part of me wishing that I could play, because eating running endless cookies laps around isn't actually as fun as it sounds.  The only problem is that basketball and I don't really know each other.  I've never played, except with my little brother in the driveway (I usually win, FYI) and I'm pretty sure I'm completely oblivious to most of the rules and all of the strategy.  This week was rough because I started thinking about everything I don't know about basketball the other day and ended up feeling pretty inadequate.  I'm trying to fix that by remembering that there are quite a few things that I do know stuff about. 

For example:  The Office, Mean Girls, how to pack the maximum amount of deliciousness and calories into dessert foods, personality types, Instagram, how to stay warm when it's -223482 degrees outside, finding the shirt I want in the sea of clothes that is my floor with my eyes half shut, standardized tests, Harry Potter, and procrastinating.  I've been especially on top of my procrastinating game lately. 

If you're feeling inadequate because of a lack of basketball / driving safely in the snow / applying the perfect cateye skills, never fear!  (Except if you can't drive safely in the snow.  That's kind of dangerous.)  You may very well be a fantastic procrastinator. 

9 Ways to Tell That You're Great at Procrastination

1 | If you have a little bit of extra time before you absolutely have to head out the door to get somewhere, you use it . . . usually to do something that takes up more than the extra time you had.  You know, like washing, drying, and curling your whole entire hair or writing a blog post.  

2 | When you hear a deadline, you count backwards as many hours as the task will take you in order to plan your time wisely.  You might even subtract an hour or two to take your amazing efficiency into account.

3 | You plan your routine around what will allow you the highest amount of procrastination time.  I.e., waking up earlier so you can lay on the couch with your dog and pretend you're procrastinating for a while before actually doing anything. 

It's especially easy to procrastinate when the dog happens to look like this. 

4 | Getting things done ahead of time, all the time makes you uncomfortable.  I tried it for like a week last year and I guess I missed the adrenaline rush of scrambling to get stuff done, because something felt off and I was force to revert to procrastinating.   

5 | You don't turn in your volleyball uniform until a week after the rest of the team and the threat of detention.  Or maybe that's just me trying to avoid the reality of basketball season. 

6 | You turn in forms the day that they're due and not a second sooner.  This includes, but is not limited to, completing three college applications in one day or whatever the grown up equivalent of that is.  

7 | You have to rake the snow off your lawn in order to start the leaf raking job that you've been putting off. 

Fin fact: this picture was taken while taking leaves.

8 | Your friends can expect their birthday present at any time within 12 months after their actual birthday.  I might still be working on a painting that I started for a friend whose birthday was in December.  

9 | The mind of those who don't regularly practice procrastination is completely baffling to you.  You find yourself saying things like "Already?" "I haven't even started that,"  or  "What are you working on?" frequently.  

Procrastination requires a very specific skill set and years and years and year and years of experience.  (I mean, procrastination takes a while.)  It takes dedication and a little bit of guts. . . kind of like basketball.  

Allie