The Procrastinator's Motivation: A list of what you COULD become

Have you ever wondered why you ALWAYS seem to wait until the last minute to get something deathly important done? Or maybe why you seem to always end up writing that paper/project at 4:45am the night before you have to present it? If either one of these situations tends to be you, this entry has your name on it: You, the Procrastinator.

How do you beat the addiction to procrastination? I'm going to tell you how you lazy, last-minute, son-of-a-gun.


Visualize Failure

Great people tend to be EXTREMELY confident. Honestly, they can sometimes border know-it-all status. The best way to get yourself OFF your butt and do whatever it is you need to do is to visualize what will happen if you fail. If its a major project, you'll get an F on it and probably fail the class. If its something work related, you'll get written up or fired. Sometimes you have to threaten yourself by using failure as collateral into making you handle your business.


Do it Early

This idea may not work for less disciplined folks, but give it a try anyway. In college, I would always get my syllabus at the beginning of the quarter/trimester and go hard at getting my major assignments done at the beginning of the class. I would basically do all my work in the first 2 weeks of the semester and chill the last 8 or 9 weeks. When you work ahead, you leave cushion for extra credit, meeting with professors/teachers, sleep, travel (I went to Hawaii twice during Finals week when I was in college), and any other ideas you can come up with to fill the time. By the end of the semester, EVERYONE is sweating bullets trying to finish up their stuff, and your brilliant self is watching The Godfather Trilogy because you can do that.

Positive Peer Pressure

My dad attended a University that was very picky in who they allowed in their fraternities. He tended to be a clown, so they never chose him to join up. He came up with this simple solution; "If you can't join um, make one up and take their pool of applicants" . My old man created a fraternity on his campus in which the initiation was a shot of Jack Daniel's. His "frat" brothers had buttons/jackets and everything! This guys a legend because he created a positive support system that helped him make it through college. This story is important because it exemplifies the teamwork aspect of school.
Creating a support group in every class you have will insure that you receive phone calls, texts, and every other type of correspondence reminding you to get something done. You'll only procrastinate when you're allowed to, and a positive support group will be on you like a shadow.

A List of What You COULD Become

Sometimes, we just have to imagine things to get up and moving in the right direction. Here's a list of how your life can turn out if you keep screwing around:

-You could live in a cardboard box (no offense to people who live in cardboard boxes)
-You could be 30 and still live with your mom
-You could end up working for a company that doesn't recognize your degree
-You could become that creepy guy who visits his high school every year just to remember life
before it sucked
-You could be the punchline of a joke that's funny to everybody who didn't procrastinate
-You could end up being over 25 years old and still sagging your pants because you think its cool
-You could become that old man at the club
-You could become the cat lady on the block who disobeys the 3 cat to a house ordinance
-You could procrastinate yourself to death and have to be buried in your cardboard box because
you failed to get yourself a casket


The bottom line: stop procrastinating as you're making good students look lazy. Get it together, become something, lead, and make your parents proud that they fed and clothed you for 18 years. It's the least you could do.