A Case for Procrastination

Procrastination gets a bad rap. 

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating for waiting till the night before to work on your big presentation (though ✋🏻 I’ve been there). 

In college, I watched as a friend prepared for over an hour for what essentially amounted to a grown-up show-and-tell for a class I took the year before.

The assignment was to use three physical items and explain how they define you. 

Me? I forgot about it until I was on my way to class, so hastily grabbed a few items on my way out the door. On the fly, I found a creative way to use the items to describe me as a person. Two minutes, max. It was ungraded. Pass/fail. 

And likely worth around 0.1% of our grade. 

And here was my poor friend, stressing over making it perfect. 

That kind of effort is 100% admirable. It is 100% necessary for the big stuff. The meaningful stuff. The papers, the exams, the presentations. 

But what I gained from my procrastination was ultimately more valuable to me than that degree of effort would have been. 

Why?

I had to be quick on my feet. I had to think creatively. I had to sound prepared when I wasn’t. 

Doesn’t that sound a lot like adulthood? 

Of course I prepare and put forth great effort for most of the work that I do. But there's value in matching the effort with the value.

And even more importantly, sometimes (as we’ve learned all too well over the last year), life gets unpredictable. 

I can’t tell you how often I’ve had a plan for my day get blown up by an emergency that pulled me in an entirely different direction. 

And you have to be nimble. 

To figure out a solution as you go. 

And you aren’t often afforded the luxury of preparation. 

So sure. Procrastination shouldn’t be your default. But, at least in my case, it helped me develop the skills that have helped me succeed.