“[Procrastinators] of the World / Unite and Take Over” + Muxtape

I’m a rare breed.

Many people possess (and even embrace) dualities in their life, myself included. However, the one I’m most proud makes little sense to me. As many of you know, I’m a habitual procrastinator. However, I’m also obsessed with productivity.

Yes, my head hurts too. I’ll explain.

I’ve come to terms with my procrastinatory tendencies. I have all the usual symptoms – lack of focus, scattershot insomnia, guilt over putting things off, and strange obsessions to get minuscule activities accomplished when larger ones loom (my iTunes library is miraculously tagged). In recent times, I’ve accepted that this is how I work and that little to nothing will change this.

However, I’m also obsessed with ways to become efficient. I read Lifehacker religiously, scouring the site for ways to streamline how I work. Google Reader is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages to the point that I’ll open Firefox and not have anywhere to go because I’ve gone through everything that I want to see (and some things I didn’t). I’m always looking for something that will improve or replace something else.

So, how can someone who accomplishes so little maintain this obsession? Seth Stevenson’s hilarious piece for Slate titled “Letter to a Young Procrastinator” boils it down to one simple idea:

I’m here to tell you that it was none of these things. The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I’m lazy. Extremely lazy.

Honestly, he’s probably right. Many times, I put things off because, quite frankly, I don’t feel like doing them. Who really wants to move all those empty water bottles from the back seat of the car to the recycling bin? Does my master’s thesis really need to be written before 11:00 the night before it’s due?

And the obsession with productivity? I see a fine line between laziness and efficiency. The old saying suggests that we work “smarter, not harder,” and I see working “smarter” as doing less work. Simply put, if I work efficiently, I’ll have more time to run more Mario Kart races, add more feeds to Google Reader, or find more books to add to my to-read list rather than reading them.

However, dear reader (who, I realize, will probably be procrastinating as well when you read this), all hope is not lost. In fact, I feel empowered by my self-awareness and see my procrastination as an asset. Stevenson agrees as well:

For true procrastinators, nothing gets done without a deadline. As we say in journalism: The deadline is your friend. And when that deadline looms too near to procrastinate any longer, you need to take care of business. Crank it out, baby.

Executed correctly, this method is in fact terrific practice for maintaining your cool in stressful work environments. Pressing deadline anxiety can be channeled into an extreme level of focus. If you can train yourself to complete your assignments under pressure, quickly and efficiently, you will always find yourself in demand.

So, should I be proud of this? No. Does it make me a better person? Probably not. Does it get the job done? Absolutely. Even while writing this, I procrastinated by writing e-mails, reading about Facebook’s devaluation and a live-action Fraggle Rock movie, and generally spacing out. Old habits die hard.

In a related note, I updated my muxtape for Left of the Dial with some new songs. If you’re new to muxtape, it lets users make twelve song mixes that play right from your browser. It would be a great way to procrastinate. Listen to my muxtape over at the Left of the Dial site. If you end up making one, let me know – I’ll listen to it later.

Technorati Tags: slate, muxtape, procrastination, google reader, productivity