Scott: “Damn I’m definitely procrastinating from starting this lab report, lol. MUST STAY FOCUSED.”
Ashley: “Procrastinating sucks.”
Amy: “Tryna stop procrastinating about this school workkk.”
-Facebook

I don’t even like saying that word. The “P” word. It’s been diluted with millions of whiny Facebook statuses and has become unfortunately tied to the tiny giggles that always seem to bookend its place in a sentence (“What am I up to? Well I should be working on my ___ but I’m *giggle* procrastinating *shoulder shrug/giggle part deux*).” Disgusting. But there’s a reason for its overuse. An APA study estimated that 80 to 90 percent of college students procrastinate, and about 75 percent proudly label themselves procrastinators. As annoying as that may be, procrastination is a real problem, and it’s a very common one. But just like so many other scourges of our society, it won’t magically go away if we talk about it more.

Notice how the Facebook statuses above talk about procrastination. They portray him/her as a separate entity. The enemy. Some terribly clever hellish creature that jumps on your back and pulls you, bodily, away from your responsibilities. Its long, dirty fingernails melting into your own as you click click click away through a photo album on Facebook that suddenly seems like the most important discovery in the world …

The more you think about it, the stranger it seems to talk about procrastination as something that exists on its own. I don’t know of any major religion that endorses the existence of the “Procrastination Monster.” So until the Pope in Rome tells us otherwise, let’s all just assume that procrastination is nothing more than a state of mind. This is good because your mind is a very silly place, and if you can find your way around some pesky roadblocks, like logic and common sense, you can create your own solutions.

So, let’s say that your entire existence is organized like a Venn diagram. In one circle we have all the time you spend being productive. In the other we have all the time you spend enjoying yourself. Guess what’s in the intersecting area? Nothingness. Uselessness. Procrastination. In a typical day we shift our mind’s energy back and forth between these two areas.

This wouldn’t be a problem, except that on its way back from Happy Fun Land, that nothingness in the middle becomes a black hole! Holy sheets! And your mind doesn’t escape until about 11:00 at night, every night, at which point it goes poking around the desolate wasteland of “Being Responsible World” all in a daze, looking for an energy drink and wondering what the hell just happened.

So here’s the solution: take a detour. Build a little rocket for your mind. Keep it inside your head, in “Happy Fun Land.” When it inevitably comes time to leave “Happy Fun Land,” just strap your frontal lobe to the rocket and fly it right around that black hole. There should be plenty of cosmological physicists in “Happy Fun Land” to help you with the trajectory and whatnot. And then, as the cosmological physicists and all the other cool people who live in “Happy Fun Land” wave goodbye to you, you can focus on landing safely in “Being Responsible World” and getting the hell out of there as fast as you can.

It doesn’t even have to be a rocket. Depending on how technologically advanced your subconscious is, you might even be able to cook up a teleporter or maybe some floo powder, if you prefer magic over science. Whatever the device, the point is to get from one spot to the other as instantaneously as possible.

I’m still working to build my little rocket, but here’s a few things that might help your switch to Uber-Productive mode: 1) Furrow your brow and stare down your computer like it just said something about your mama. Don’t be afraid to talk some smack to it if it’ll make you feel better. I’d suggest stopping short of physical violence though. 2) Get yourself a drink. Coffee is ideal. A person just sitting in front of a computer could be doing anything, but if that person has a beverage in hand, you’d better believe they’re taking care of business. Look around you. There are no exceptions to this rule. 3) Make a motion that looks vaguely like Tai Chi or something a Shaolin Monk would do, the more exaggerated and stereotypical the better. Aim it at your pile of work. Don’t expect anything to happen to the pile of work. It’s a pile of work, stupid. It’s an inanimate cussing object. What’s it going to do, run away? Now stop messing around and get back to work.