Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

My name is Samantha Reaves and I'm a procrastinator. I'm an addict and my addiction is putting things off until the last minute. Why? I've never quite figured that out. I've given tons of excuses "I can't focus on the task at hand if I have weeks to finish it" "I work better under pressure" and the age old classic "I'll do it tomorrow." What I really want to know is why. Why do I procrastinate? Is it because I'm lazy? Maybe. Is it because I really do work better under pressure? Perhaps.

It just seems to me that I should stop procrastinating. It only leads to anxiety and stress when I put something off until the last minute. Meeting deadlines hours or mere minutes before their time is at hand is no way to live for an already stressed college student! Yet I just keep putting it off. Whatever it is, I'll do it later. Hence why I'm putting my last blog post up late on a Friday afternoon. There were tons of times this week when I could have sat down and hammered out some great blog posts but, meh, I just kept putting it off.

Maybe it's genetic. My brother claims that he procrastinates because he just cannot focus on what he's doing if he knows it's not due for a while. I feel the same way. If I sit down to, say, write a paper and it isn't due for another week I feel that I should be focusing on something else that's due sooner. Probably something that I could have done a week ago but had put off until that moment. It's a vicious cycle, this procrastinating thing.

Perhaps I just need better time management skills. That seems to be a reasonable solution. Manage my time better. That's easier said than done. I can't sit down and write a schedule when I'm too busy scrambling to finish something that should have been done days ago! I'm not Wonder Woman! Of course I'm merely being facetious. I realize that were I to better organize my time, I would spend less of said time panicking over late assignments. It seems that I've just gotten to used to procrastinating and then panicking over whatever it is that I put off, that life would be very different if I started doing things ahead of time. Besides, where would the excitement be if I weren't scrambling to meet a deadline? Do I want to be able to lie down at night and go right to sleep without worrying about impending doom brought on by myself? Where's the fun in that?

I think I'll probably spend the rest of my life procrastinating. I mean, sure, I could sit down and organize myself and my thoughts. I could write down "To Do" lists and feel the wonderful satisfaction of checking things off ahead of time. I could really benefit from the lack of stress due to poor time management skills. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.