An Open Letter to Procrastination

Procrastination, you and I have a sort of love-hate relationship going on. To be honest, its been going on for far too long You are great at making me happy and doing fun stuff all the time like checking social media and listening to music. You are also great at distracting me with these things to the point where I don’t do the things I need to do with the day. Believe it or not, I do actually have things to do and can’t just waste all my time listening to your every command! In case you were wondering (which I highly doubt you were), I have a few ideas of how to combat your incessant nature.

You are the main reason for all my stress at the moment, which will exponentially increase once I’m back at uni with a mountain of assignments and books to read and study. You divert attention away from things that are actually important like housework or writing blog posts. Honestly, I would have written this a lot sooner if I didn’t have you encouraging me to check my phone or watch a 3-hour Markiplier live stream I’ve already watched. Furthermore, I have a schedule for my housework and you do not do me any favours when I still haven’t done any of those chores 3 whole days (sometimes more) later. I get paid to do chores, in case you didn’t realise, so I really don’t appreciate your antics! Also, keeping on telling me that I’ll have plenty of time to do it later isn’t good either. There will always be a spanner thrown in the works when you use this little trick, making it take longer than you promised me it would. The fact that I believed you in the first place – bah!

There are a few things I’ve thought of to reign you in a bit. And God knows I need to reign you in a bit. Or maybe a little bit more than a bit.

First off, writing a to-do list every morning so that I know exactly what has to be done that day. I’ve done that today, actually, and it’s worked quite well. I’ve done all my chores for the day and I’m kinda proud of that. Sure, I left writing this for last (which is another kind of you that I can’t deal with), procrastinating “non-fun” stuff with easier “non-fun” stuff, but at least I’m doing it and not putting it off further!

Another thing I have done today and plan to continue to do is to add a little reward at the bottom of my to do list which can only be done after I’ve done everything else on that list, no matter how many things there are. Today, my reward is unlimited time on my phone until the end of the day. Therefore, the sooner I finish my work, the more time I can spend doing fun stuff.

One more thing I want to implement is kind of cheating in a way, but I’m gonna go with it. I’m going to put music on while I do my chores, to tide you over a bit while doing “non-fun” stuff. It makes all those “non-fun” but very necessary things less mind-numbing. In a way it makes you procrastinate from making me procrastinate, so it’s a win-win situation in my book!

Also, no one seems to like you. I’ve heard people say that you’ve ruined their lives. So, cheers!

Love, Nicky x