Procrastination’s a style, right? A style of living, certainly. A bona fide lifestyle, a relentless thing, to those of us who never seem to get done even half the shit we tell ourselves we want to do.
Instead, we spend some of that time – too fucking much of that time – on our bad habits. Smoking yet another cancerstick. Chewing in the manner of rabid marmots at our already-bleeding cuticles. Vegging out for hours in front of a TV screen flooded with commercial pimpery and talentless famewhores.
We’re gonna stop doing this, we tell ourselves. Enough already, we vow. We’re going to, finally, through sheer force of will, get some worthwhile shit done with our lives, hallelujah!
Yeah, well, Sheer Force Of Will has always crapped out in the past, hasn’t it? Sheer Force Of Will is such the overrated gambit, in our case. Better to rely on something tried and true: Our Inner Scheming Nature and Our Propensity For Procrastination.
Here’s how:
First, convince yourself that your bad habits are things you really need to do, that you’d be better off doing those bad-habity things. That they’ll make your life soooooo much better and you’ll reap the rewards of meaning and joy and societal popularity and so forth. C’mon, now: You can wheedle and con with the best of ’em, can’t you? Make yourself believe it. Let the truth of the lie sink deep into your neocortex, into your brain’s Gullibility Area, all the way to where your limbic system spins its idiot web of power and response.
Get it? Got it?
Good.
Now let your urge toward procrastination kick in. Let your Never-Got-A-Round-Tuit lifestyle grind into full gear. Soon enough, the usual modus operandi that’s kept you from achieving the fame, fortune, and general feelings of fulfillment that you’ve always kinda sorta wanted … soon enough, that same M. O. will now thwart your attempts at indulging in whatever bad habits come blithely a-knocking at the doors of your ennui.
Want a cigarette? Ah, too much trouble. Feel like chomping on a hangnail? Maybe later, after you take a jog around the block. Thinking about catching some American Idol? Fuck it, that can wait: You’d really rather volunteer down at the food bank right now.
See how easy it is?
See?
This article appears in June 13 • 2008.