the bird on fire

By Levi Kassinove

Now that the last final exam has been taken, the last project submitted, it’s safe to share Levi’s TIPS ON HOW TO PROCRASTINATE. Got summer reading? These tips will be handy.

Procrastination is a habit amongst people who either think that they can finish the work in one day, or are genuinely lazy and don’t care about school. The latter is easier to understand; the former seems like an illogical thought pattern. If people can finish the work in one day, why don’t they finish it early so that they have time to relax? As a master procrastinator myself (I waited until the night before every final project this year was due to start and finish them), I can say it’s because we don’t want to. We’re a stubborn group of people who’d rather put off the suffering and forget about it until we are forced to take care of it. Call us lazy, but I say it’s a way of life. Here are 5 steps on how best to procrastinate. 

Step 1: Plan out your procrastination.

Actually forgetting about the homework or project you were assigned is an advanced technique and should therefore not be attempted by beginner procrastinators. The best thing to do is to plan out exactly when and for how long you’re going to procrastinate. A classic example of this thought pattern is, “I’m going to do absolutely nothing for the next three days, and THEN I’ll do my project after dinner at 10 p.m. That should give me enough time.” Forgetting about the assignment is a riskier move, but it does relieve the stress of not doing the homework. If you planned it out, you’d have to have the assignment in the back of your head the whole time. But, as our motto goes, “Stress is a future me problem.”

Step 2: Bargain and make empty promises.

A great way to prolong your procrastination is to make promises with yourself that you know you’ll never keep. These can include telling yourself that you’ll do half the homework today and the rest tomorrow, making a fake schedule for when you plan to do the homework, and promising yourself some ice cream if you get the homework done early. We all know, however, that we’d just end up eating the ice cream and never doing the work. 

Step 3: Find better ways to spend your time.

Whether it’s eating ice cream, watching TikTok, reading (yeah, right), browsing Reddit, or playing video games, we all need to find something better to do than homework. We need to preoccupy ourselves so that we don’t feel guilty or stressed, unless you’re doing the advanced technique of forgetting the homework exists. Distraction is key for procrastination. “I could do my homework right now, but Genshin Impact just got a new update…”

Step 4: Gaslight yourself.

The most effective way to procrastinate is to convince yourself that there is no homework. That way you don’t even have to think about it. To convince yourself that there is no homework, start by asking the question, “How can I trust that I know we have homework?” Or even, “What is homework?” After you convince yourself that there is no homework, it becomes easier to convince others that you have no homework. The lie becomes easier if you believe it as well. “Yes, mother, I also think it’s weird that my teachers haven’t assigned homework in four days!”

Step 5: Do the work.

The time has come. Your assignments are due in three hours. The hardest part of procrastinating is actually doing the work just hours before it is due. Not only are you in a time crunch, but it’s also late at night, so you have the additional disadvantage of being tired. Sometimes I drink coffee and sacrifice sleep that night. The key takeaway here is that if you choose to procrastinate, you have to be absolutely confident in your ability to do large amounts of work in a short amount of time. Otherwise, you pay the price of a terrible grade.