It’s currently 12:27 a.m. on Monday and this article is due at 10 a.m.

I started writing this article three days ago. Well, I don’t know if I can say that. Let me try again.

I made this Google Doc three days ago. I started this article now. How did I get here? That’s a great question.

Procrastination. It’s a wild wildebeest, isn’t it?

OK, sorry, now it’s 1:32 a.m. I’m back. What was I talking about? Oh, right, procrastination. Jeez, I was gone for an hour and five minutes. Was any of that time usefully spent? No. Is time a limited commodity that I am aware can be taken away from me at any moment? Sure. But, did I spend that time watching clips of Gordon Ramsay telling hotel owners their hotels suck? Yes.

So, again I ask, how did I get here?

Well, I was born a day early, and that’s probably the last time I’ve been ahead of schedule. Procrastination is something I’ve dealt with my entire life. It’s infuriating and frustrating because I fall into these deep holes of distraction.

It’s like that weird sequence of events in “The Dark Knight Rises,” when Batman is in a huge hole and has to escape. I feel like Batman in that hole. Stuck in a large underground prison and I need a bunch of men chanting in a foreign language to get out of it.

OK, back again. It’s now 9:53 a.m. I fell asleep and don’t believe in my chances of turning this in at 10. Sorry to my editors. These things are supposed to be 650 words and I’m currently just over 275. Now I can’t be distracted anymore because I have to finish because it’s already late.

And what I’ve done on this article so far is a common theme. I wrote an article last semester about how to write a last-minute paper, because I have put myself in the position to need to do so one too many times.

It’s not like I’ll be typing and thinking to myself: “Hey, there are so many other things you can be doing right now.” My body will just begin to do other things. I’ll black out for a second and then be stuck in a trance watching a 23-minute-long “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” piece I’ve already seen.

I go into autopilot. If we’re sticking with movie references, I feel like Adam Sandler in “Click” when he fast forwards through time. I am just in a trance until I’m able to break out of it and get back on track. I’m glad I’m appealing to the large intersection of Batman and Sandler fans.

It’s hard and scary because it’s so unknown. How can I break this cycle of not being able to pay attention, stay focused and complete tasks? Is this temporary or is it forever? To quote a girl I heard in Hall of Languages once: “I try to pay attention in class, but there are so many BuzzFeed quizzes I still haven’t taken yet.” So true.

And the thing is, I love getting work done early. I revel in it. I once completed a big marking period project back in high school about a month early with my group. We busted it out in a weekend, and I told everyone in my class who hadn’t started it the weekend before how happy I was to be done and how screwed they were. I loved it, and not because I’m a horrible human being, but because it feels good to clear something off your plate.

So, I have to figure out a way to break free from this cycle. Adding tabs is a huge distraction for me. I bookmarked Facebook, YouTube and Netflix, and that’s my fault, but I still get to them even when those bookmarks aren’t there. Should I just convert to a typewriter or, even worse, start using the web browser Safari? Both would be extremely inconvenient and slow.

I am not sure how to fix this. I even tried looking up ways to stop procrastinating on Google and the article said, “Don’t read this, get back to your work, idiot.” It’s good advice, but it doesn’t help me in the long run.

Procrastination is tough. If you deal with it, it’s not something you can just stop. Some people say, “Just focus. Don’t let yourself be distracted.” Those people can go to hell. It’s not intentional. I don’t sit there and say, “I’m working on this paper, but you know what’s even more fun? Cleaning all the dust out of my fan.” No, my body just takes over and starts scooping dust out of my fan.

Look, I am not sure what to do. Procrastination and a lack of focus have been really rough for me, especially this semester. I really want to work on stopping procrastinating. Or, maybe I’ll just get to it later.

Josh Feinblatt is a junior television, radio and film major. If his editors ask, he didn’t actually write this article last minute, but let’s be honest, all parties know he did. He can be reached on Twitter @joshfeinblatt — where he will respond quickly since he’s often there when he should be doing assignments — or by email at jfeinbla@syr.edu, where he’ll probably get distracted by Twitter and forget to get back to you.

Published on November 6, 2017 at 10:07 pm