How do I deal with stress? Procrastinate, clearly! I used to be a huge procrastinator. I’d procrastinate on almost every assignment I needed to complete. I still remember a time back in fourth grade where I didn’t start putting together my science fair project until the day before it was due (and somehow got an A). I always waited the last minute for most of my assignments and usually everything just worked out somehow. Though high school showed me I needed to better manage my time in order to keep up with all my classes and activities, there are times where I’ll just have zero motivation to do any work, such as writing my nonfiction essays. Here, I’ll set up a scenario:
I stare at my laptop screen, barely holding up my head up with my arm. As I try to work on an assignment, my brain begins to offer a new idea instead of working. “Hey, go ahead and postpone your work for just fifteen short minutes. This’ll help you reenergize and get you back into your groove!” My hand begins to unconsciously move the computer’s cursor towards my bookmarked YouTube tab, as I’m in a back and forth debate with myself over whether or not to procrastinate. These almost always end in disaster.
I open up YouTube and start my journey, going to their trending page and selecting the video I find the most interesting. I then let the AutoPlay feature do its thing, and by the time an hour passes by I’m watching the most random and weird videos such as “Jimmy Neutron Happy Family Happy Hour” that are for some reason a thousand times more interesting now that I am procrastinating. I snap back into consciousness realizing that I’ve just spent an hour wasting my precious time. I go back to my assignment, but now, not only do I feel less motivated to do my work, I am more tired than before I took my “little” break. And the cycle repeats all over again, until I’ve felt enough guilt to either force myself to get back to work, or worse, go to bed and just rely on myself to wake up tomorrow and finish it tomorrow.
I try to procrastinate to relieve stress, but in fact it does the opposite. My brain will keep reminding me over and over again of my important tasks, thus clearly causing a lot of stress until the intensity of the reminder is too much and I’m forced to work, or I’m screwed. I feel guilty and unhappy, and it’s really hard to bring myself to stop procrastinating once I have started. Real sad boi hours.
