Procrastination as a Style

Hi.  My name is Megan and I'm a procrastinator.

I'm actually procrastinating right now. Yep, this very moment.  I should be cleaning for an appraisal of our house tomorrow, but instead I'm writing a blog post on procrastinating.  Amazing how the guilt doesn't push me back to cleaning, huh?

A little background:  in school I would never do the homework until the day before it was due.  Sometimes the day of.  And studying for a test never occurred too far in advance either.  I used to feel horribly guilty about it.  I would beat myself up and hate myself every time I was down to the last minute again.  I'm stunned looking back at the amount of self-loathing that occurred because I didn't get things done ahead of time.

After a particular rant against myself and my procrastinating ways, my counselor asked me one day if my grades were suffering because of my procrastinating.  Well...no.  In fact, I was a straight A student.  He suggested that maybe this was just my style:  I merely needed that extra motivation and pressure to get things done.  I was still getting things done, done well, and on time, so why was I beating myself up that a certain project wasn't done days or weeks in advance?

Talk about a light bulb moment.

You have no idea how freeing this was!  Suddenly the guilt was gone.  I wasn't a lazy bum.  I wasn't a slacker.  I just had a different style to accomplishing things.  This realization even allowed me to work on things ahead of time, knowing that I didn't have to finish it right then.  I could just do the prep work for that last push at the last minute.  

So yes, I'm a procrastinator.  And I'm not trying to change.