Productive Procrastination

Yeah, I’m guilty as fuck on this one. (I’m not the only one!) And, on occasion, I have been guilty of procrasturbating, too! Sue me! I always win in the end because at least I still get stuff done – either promptly or right on time, including, eventually, the important deadline stuff that I procrastinated in doing in the first place! 🤣

I understand that many other highly intelligent people function this way, too; often waiting until either the last week, the last day, or even the last few hours to complete a deadline task or project. I tend to procrastinate only on those tasks that I neither particularly like nor enjoy doing and those which I know must be done yet have the attitude that the task itself is either unnecessary or a waste of my talent and time to do.

Some of the tasks/projects that I’ve procrastinated in doing in my life include or have included the writing of:

• essays and term papers back in high school and college. Often would be amazed how I always got the highest grades on papers that were written a mere 12 to 24 hours earlier.
• quarterly and annual performance evaluations on the people I supervised when I was in the Navy. (And there were a lot of those damn things!) Fortunately for me, my division officer often made little to almost no change to my drafted submissions.
• speeches for either social functions or sociopolitical rallies where I was to be one of the speakers. I’d often kick myself for having sweated in writing those damn speeches when came for me to speak, I often if not always spoke impromptu at those events, completely without my prepared speech anyway.
• detailed radio program reports for submission to the FCC at the end of each quarter of the year. I’d always wait until the last few days remaining in each quarter to write and submit the reports. Happily since I no longer work in radio broadcasting as a producer, that annoying task is one I’ll never again have to do.

I think the secret to my success in productive procrastination – at least as far as any written tasks/projects are concerned, rests in my abilities as a honed and skilled writer, otherwise, I think I’d be so fucked. //⚤//

– RobFather

(Article originally posted to Facebook on Tuesday, April 26, 2022.)