and now, a guest post

by my stellar nephew, bobby. i guess sarcasm runs in the family. my book writing process has been deeply affirmed by this essay. really.

Bobby Gordon

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently attending Northwood High, Bobby Gordon has spent most of his educational career procrastinating on most every one of his assignments. Being mainly an honors student, Gordon has had many academic tasks throughout which he has learned all the ins and outs of being an efficient procrastinator, while still maintaining a respectable grade.  He is most noted for his 10^th grade English essay on “Things Fall Apart,” which received an A and provoked suspicion of plagiarism while being completed in less than two hours, the night before it was due. Truly, superb stuff.

The Tool of Procrastination

This essay has been assigned for five days, yet I’m starting it less than twelve hours before it’s due.

To your run-of-the-mill, high school bumpkin, this would be traumatic. However, we Procrastinauts thrive on this stress-induced reservoir of creativity. Oh, by the way, we prefer the term Procrastinaut. Meaning voyager, the suffix ‘-naut’ really allows the true art of procrastinating to be shown. We trek into the valley of the unknown, with the only truth being that our time is limited.

Yes, of course it would be ‘better’ to plan your work and divide it into equal portions across a sensible time frame blah blah blah. Are you really going to do that? Where is the passion? Where are your ambitions? Your true persona? Not in that essay, I’ll tell you that much.

Besides science projects and the such, all of my assignments are completed within the final hours of eligibility. While the unlearned majority may find this to be an undesirable characteristic, being a legitimate Procrastinaut isn’t defined by being lazy and sloppy in your work, but rather striving to obtain the edge that only procrastinating can supply.

 Ask yourself: what sets man apart from animal? Is it that man has no free will? I don’t think it is. Is it that man is controlled by the due dates around him? Not necessarily.

You see not a squirrel waiting until the last hours of fall to gather all of his nuts. No rabbits waiting till the final days of spring to mate.

This, in my opinion, is what sets man apart from animal: The ability to take a risk. A risk for the chance, or rather, the hope that there will be something greater awaiting you on the other side.

But alas, the purpose of this passage is not to dwell on the nature of the mind of man. The purpose is to show you, the run-of-the-mill high school bumpkin, how to become an efficient, functioning, and hopefully productive Procrastinaut.

Firstly, and above all, you have to drill the idea into your skull that procrastinating does not equate to being a slacker. If you come into this lifestyle believing that procrastinating will be the easier route, you will inevitably crash into the stunning realization that a slacker is a slacker and slackers will fail. Don’t be a slacker.

So – you received your assignment. A process analysis essay on the topic of your choice. Rule-free assignments are the crème de la crème for Procrastinauts, so see it that you have it a little easier this time. The following step will be by far the longest step in the process of procrastinating. Brainstorming. You must let your ideas fall like raindrops, some striking like lighting, and some roaring like thunder. Protect yourself from the bad ones, while entertaining the good. But, wait – what defines a good and bad idea?

Good ideas are:

·      Open-ended

·      Intriguing

·      Discussable

While bad ideas are:

·      Close-ended

·      Dull

·      Not very discussable

This second step may be the most paramount to your success at becoming an efficient Procrastinaut. Without a good idea, you may become discouraged during the writing process, leading to an essay that appears effortless and rushed. Spend an adequate amount of time thinking about your essay before you write it. Whenever you get free time, your mind should be roaming the vast ideas that you can sculpt with the chisel that is your ideals and the hammer that is your personality. You finished your test early? Brainstorm. Your math teacher is rambling about how fun and exciting math is? Brainstorm. If I haven’t emphasized this step enough, BRAINSTORMING IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

Once you are done brainstorming and the essay is due the next morning, I suggest that you begin manifesting your ideas with a few clicks of the keyboard. This step is usually the most rewarding, as you suddenly get to see the intangible become tangible. The Procrastinaut method is not for everyone, as some may discover at this step. Some beginning Procrastinauts could find themselves staring at a blank screen, waiting for words to appear while cursing my inspirational spiel on what separates man from animal, realizing that their hope was false and that the greater reward is absent. Consider yourselves warned.

Now, those who have the Procrastinaut gene embedded in their DNA will find the words practically flooding from their hands, barely being able to keep up with all the ideas constructed during step two. These brethren of mine will likely see that the work they are producing now is like comparing diamond to quartz in relation to their old method.

Not only will you have just knocked the ball out of the park, you will have also had a good time doing it. Why spend five days writing an essay diluted with bore and drabness, when you can spend a few hours spilling concentrated inspiration onto the page?

In essence, true, hardened Procrastinauts are seen falsely in the eyes of teachers and peers alike. We are not a community of slackers. We are not kids who feel as if they have better things to do, and wait until the last minute to produce some chewed up, regurgitated ideas we found online or have stolen from our peers. We are, in fact, risk-takers. We are those who explore the unexplored depths of our own minds to dust off ideas that even we couldn’t have imagined of imagining. We do flourish under the stress of a time limit.

We are those who have an edge on the rest of the animals.