Life in the slow lane takes time to perfect

March 8, 2007 - Procrastination is something many, many people attempt, but not everyone is good at it. Procrastination is more than just a bad habit, as some would call it. It is an accomplished art.

Students have practiced this art since there was a chance to do so. Young adults are quite prone to the “live in the moment” mindset - have fun now, deal with work later.

Like anything else, the only way to get better at procrastination is to practice. The students who have mastered the art have been doing it for years.

There are tricks to procrastination; simply putting things off to the last minute will result in more stress than necessary. True procrastination is actually advanced time management. There are many questions procrastinators have learned to ask and answer, without much thought.

Some of these questions may include: How long will this take me to complete? How much easy work can I do to make the final crunch take less time? When can I lose sleep for this project?

Of course, procrastination is not always something actively practiced. There are many who would rather they learned from each stress-filled experience instead of continuing to passively procrastinate.

“Procrastination sucks you in - you can't escape!” laughed Kristen Siders, who procrastinates often. Many would agree that it is like a never-ending cycle of putting things off, and it can sometimes get out of hand.

When I asked senior and accomplished procrastinator Veronica Hernandez if she would talk to me about putting things off, she responded with, “I'll talk to you later, OK?” After a second I started to laugh, and she quickly caught on.

This simply demonstrates how much procrastination affects the people who use it. No matter what they are asked to do, whether big or small, they are likely to put it off until the last possible second.

Students are not the only ones with this habit, though adults probably perfected their procrastination skills when they were teenagers. The problem is, adults tend to put off more pressing matters than studying for a test.

For instance, it is March already and getting close to tax time, when many people scramble at the last minute to turn in the paperwork on time. After all, the Internal Revenue Service can be a little more harsh than a teacher with a grade book.

Like any other technique, procrastination can work well if used effectively, and experience helps with this. I must admit I procrastinate on just about everything, and it works quite well for me.

Megan Ozeran is a senior at Yuba City High School. Her column appears every other week, unless she procrastinates and misses her deadline.