In delaying and avoiding writing this piece, I am succumbing to exactly what many university students are guilty of: procrastination. Though not among the seven deadly sins, procrastination is certainly pernicious enough to merit the place of runner-up. If you often find yourself deliberately racing against the clock – maybe in the midst of a frenzied last-minute laundry cycle, or perhaps composing your first and final essay draft in an adrenaline-fuelled scrawl – you’re in good company.
So, why do we procrastinate? And why do we seem to hate it? Despite the speed of our increasingly digitised age, most of us seem to harbour some unrelenting desire to slow things down. To put tasks off until the very last minute. To stall. To dither. It is curious.
For some, it is the urge to perfect everything to such an unattainable degree, that it feels ludicrous to even attempt to start. For others, it can be the pure dread of needing to tackle a task you just really do not want to do. Whatever the reason, procrastination seems to be a mental chore in itself. A staple in the forsaken name of productivity. Of course, we know we are – often painstakingly – only delaying the inevitable.
From the intensive eight week bursts of term, coupled with the general pressures of university life, Oxford certainly provides the right environment for procrastination to thrive. For me, although procrastination would bare its teeth during term time, rebelling against relentless academic pressure, it didn’t quite leave me once term was over. Though essays and reading lists still loomed, the shadowy silhouette of a deadline at the end of the long vacation felt like a lifetime away.
So I put it off. Pushed my to-do list to the furthest recesses of my mind. Tried to forget. Yet, this feeling of unproductivity gnawed at me endlessly. One of those itches that relaxation couldn’t quite scratch. But then I found if I opened my library-issued textbook, propped it out on the desk, with a pen and notebook placed strategically next to it, whilst I daydreamed out of the window right in front of it, I could hit that sweet spot of procrastination. I could exist on this liminal plane, simultaneously doing and not doing work, but feeling deceptively better for it. Reassured in my doing nothing, that I was doing something.
It can take some mental fortitude to resist the perilous temptations of procrastination, to avoid spiralling into competition with time itself. I sincerely applaud those who can and do. But perhaps procrastination doesn’t have to be so awful, after all. Its dubious redemption comes to me in the form of temporary escapism. When my work is in front of me, and it is the last thing in the world I want to do, to abandon ship feels like waving the white flag. So those minutes that slowly tick over into hours move in a kind of golden haze, allowing my mind to drift to realms far beyond, without ever having to move an inch. Seems like an ideal resolution, for now.
Both a luxury retreat for the overworked student brain and also a whirlpool into which productivity takes a nosedive, procrastination has both its merits and downfalls. Am I suggesting we embrace this age-old habit? Certainly not. But I am proposing that we cut it some slack. Before we skyrocket into the nihilism of procrastination and all its evils, we should pause. Perhaps the transient comfort of procrastination has been lost on us, after all.
