My name is Sasha and I'm a procrastinator. That's right, a self-diagnosed, self-confessed time wasting expert with a diary full of back-to-back procrastination meetings. I gave up on eating lunch today as it was a distraction from the amount of procrastination I had to get done. And this article? I'm only doing it as a way to connect with my fellow procrastinators. Call it an outreach program for people suffering from procrastination, if you will.
Procrastinating is a hard line of work. Especially, when you're already 10 hours deep into a YouTube spiral and you've watched every Jimmy Fallon clip available online. Thankfully, Tinder has turned out to be quite literally my right hand in successfully mastering my procrastination practice. I can watch Netflix, check Facebook and Tinder swipe simultaneously without having to use any brain cells at all. Sure, I have to flex my multi-tasking muscles a little but as a woman born in the late 80's I was micro chipped with these skills the moment I exited the womb.
The best part of living in a post-Tinder world is that the art of conversation is dead. When I first got Tinder just after it launched, I couldn't fend them off with a liquefied gas tanker. Now, dialogue with a stranger that transcends more than six words is quite frankly too much of a distraction from my cranking (cry-wanking) session to the entire Confessions album. Gone are the days of painstaking exchanges about hobbies, dreams and favourite pets. Now I can form an educated opinion about someone in less than 10 words of literary genius - "Roses are red, violets are twisted. Ready or not. You're about to get fisted." Opening lines like this one, along with the obligatory dick pic to complement the passionate introduction, keep my swiping left game strong. Which, in the sphere of advancing my love life is somewhat of a setback, but in the field of procrastination is a vast improvement. It means that I don't have to face the possibility of actually going on a date and falling in love and finding real, long term satisfaction in this life.
Procrastination in its many forms is a full time job. I don't have any time left to bear witness to the fact that I am wasting my life. Between all of the modern distractions I can ignore the passage of time and what it's doing to my career, my love life or my chance to leave a mark on this world. Procrastination was anecdotal when we were in university and pulling all-nighters to finish our 30,000 word essays by tomorrow's deadline. It's funny because working to deadlines and regaling each other with stories of how we survived, of how we conquered the procrastination demons and came out the other side is something that resonates with all of us.
Then there's the other kind of procrastination - the one without deadlines. Those long drawn out YouTube, Google Earth, BuzzFeed spirals that drag on for weeks, months and even years until you look back and you've missed every opportunity to make an impact. Whatever your dreams may be; writing a novel or starting your own business or just going to the gym on a regular basis - there is no deadline on dreams. Without that deadline, why should I put away the phone when I can acquire endless Tinder matches which will give me an instant gratification hit for at least 10 minutes?
It was, in fact, during one of my Ted talk spirals that I watched a 15 minute segment with Tim Urban, creator of WaitButWhy and he brought my attention to how much time I waste procrastinating. He also taught me that there is a deadline. It's called death. There are approximately 32,850 days in a 90 year-old's life. I have already used up almost 10,220 - almost a third! If this doesn't stir up the panic monster inside me then nothing will. And when it rears its ugly head, I hope it pushes me into the Thames along with my phone and my laptop. But before it does, let me just have a quick, tiny check of my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram...
Read more of Sasha's philosophical musings on her blog:setwordsfree.com