Hi, everyone. Before I begin, I just want to make sure that no one has any questions, comments

or concerns. If you have to go to the bathroom, read the newspaper, do homework or walk your dog,

please do so now, or later. I don’t want to begin unless nobody has anything else at all they need or

would consider potentially doing. Anyone? Check emails? Update your Facebook status? Okay, well I’m

not quite ready myself, so we’ll just do something we can rationalize as constructive until I am. Let’s

expand our music taste. American children don’t have enough culture these days anyway.

~Music~

Procrastination gets a bad rap these days. People like to say that procrastinators are lazy or

unmotivated. They say procrastinating is unhealthy because it creates stress. Or even go so far as to say

that procrastinators never get any work done. These people subscribe to the syllogism, procrastinating

is stressful, stress is unhealthy, procrastinating is unhealthy. Furthermore, they say that procrastinators

are unhealthy, healthy people are better than unhealthy people, average workers are better than

procrastinators. They say procrastinators do everything half way and produce uncreative and repetitive

slacker work. Simply put, this is not the way it works and these poor misguided souls are poor misguided

souls.

You see, procrastinators are some of the most motivated people around. They are constantly

doing exactly what they want to do, and they’ll do anything to avoid doing something they don’t want

to. The master procrastinators are incredibly dedicated and industrious. I count myself among the

master class. All I wanted to do this weekend was write my speech, that was all I could think about day

and night and I worked on my speech every second of the weekend I could. To give an example of

exactly how industrious and dedicated to writing this speech I am, I will list the things I did in order to

write this speech. Friday night was spent socializing and talking with my girlfriend so she wouldn’t feel

neglected when I had to work on my speech. Over the weekend I slept 23 hours; I figured this was the

minimum amount required to write a speech as eloquent as this. I played computer games for a few

hours to get my fingers dexterous enough to type accurately when I got around to typing. I researched

places to take my girlfriend on a date so that I would be motivated to finish. I took my dog for a few

walks. That way I knew he wouldn’t need to go out when I was typing up the speech. I downloaded

music from the artists, Fleet Foxes, Ronald Jenkees, Pinback, The Shins, Herman’s Hermits, MGMT,

Shanghai Restoration Project and The Beach Boys. One can’t produce such fine work without the proper

soundtrack. I need my muses, these artists just happened to be the Music of the Night. On Sunday I

watched The Phantom of the Opera and Star Wars Episode 4. This was necessary so that I could research

forceful references to put in my speech for the more cultured members of my audience. I downloaded

Microsoft Office so that I would be able to type my speech, because I had to erase my hard drive and

neglected to reinstall Word. I also downloaded Microsoft Publisher, Tools, Access, Infopath, Excel,

Groove, OpenNote, Outlook and Powerpoint, just in case I would need to make a diagram or

spreadsheet or powerpoint to enhance my speech. If I wasn’t so dedicated to producing the finest

product possible I wouldn’t have been motivated to troubleshoot Microsoft Office for an hour before

realizing it worked perfectly and I was just messing it up. That’s dedication. I then ordered pizza,

knowing that I only had time to write one draft of my speech. I wouldn’t be able to work my best on an

empty stomach. Thankfully I had been preparing to write my speech all weekend so I wasn’t too

worried. I sat down to write at 1:30 Monday morning and realized I’d forgotten to brew any tea to keep

me awake. I can’t write if I’m sleepy, can I? I sacrificed valuable writing time to make Thai Iced Tea. My

product would be better if I was highly caffeinated and Thai Iced Tea always puts me in a good mood. If

I’m not in a good mood when I write my speech, it might show through in my wording and I can’t have

that. I had to boil water and steep my tea for 10 minutes but instead of returning straight to the

computer when I was finished icing the tea and pouring in the condensed milk, I took a few minutes to

learn chemistry by throwing sugar onto the burner and watching it explode. I knew that fire would put

me in an even better mood and the further time spent would be well worth the happiness return. All of

this I did consciously to better my speech. I doubt any of you non-procrastinators spent near as much

time directly working on your speeches this weekend as I did. If I may count myself as a prime example,

it is clear from my doings that we procrastinators are the most dedicated people around.

Procrastinating is really an exercise. There is nothing more mentally grueling than justifying the

things you want to do by linking them beneficially to what you should be doing. Somehow society sees

procrastinators as lazy slackers, when in reality we are mental athletes ready to justify how playing

computer games is essential to speech writing at a moment’s notice.

Not only are procrastinators dedicated super-humans, they’re healthier mentally than people

who work at a normal pace. Unlike normal workers who call procrastinators lazy, procrastinators don’t

feel the need to put others down to feel good about themselves. While normal workers verbally abuse

procrastinators, procrastinators just keep on doing whatever it is they want to and never get around to

responding to the insecure jabs made by the normal workers. It is clear that the procrastinators are

healthier than the people who work at a normal pace because they are not insecure.

Now see, here is the true brilliance of the procrastinator. We are the Jedi of Earth. True story.

Procrastinators can bend time to their will. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience where we oversleep or

end up being late for something important and we have to get ready in far less time than we usually

have. Somehow though, we manage to complete the same tasks in the ridiculously shorter amount of

time, something we thought impossible prior to doing it. In a more extreme case, one blogger described

what he called “time dilation” when his friend was shot and the attacker turned the gun on him. He said

that when the man shot his friend he could see the bullet in the air and watched as blood spattered as if

it was in a comic book. Finally, in a more documented case, Mythbusters decided to figure out if our

perception of time could really be altered so that we actually accomplished more in less time. To study

this they strapped a clock onto a guys wrist which flashed a number too quickly for it to be read. They

then pushed him off a crane onto a net a few hundred feet below and asked him if he could read the

number when he was falling. He could. In high-stress situations the brain can slow down and accomplish

more than it can on average. Procrastinators, at least the conscious ones, intentionally put themselves in

situations where they are metaphorically stuck in the Deathstar’s trash compacter and the walls of time

close inexorably in. Their brains slow down as the stress of not meeting the deadline causes their

adrenaline to spike and they use force-like abilities to alter their perception and make decisions at

superhuman speed. This allows procrastinators to accomplish feats with speed worthy of Hermes

himself. And you thought procrastinators were lazy.

What are the benefits of procrastinating? Well, as we’ve already discussed, most procrastinators

are more dedicated, more mentally agile and healthy and have super powers. But more importantly, I

procrastinated before writing this paragraph and checked a news website to see what had changed in

the 15 minutes of writing the previous paragraph. I learned that a man from the UK took 26 years to

solve a Rubik’s cube, a couple got married in a Taco Bell on Friday, a 13 year old girl in California sent

14,528 texts last month, Heath Ledger won a Golden Globe, plasma TVs might be banned for

contaminating the environment, a website – screwattack.com ranked the Peanut Butter and Jelly

Sandwich over the Philly Cheesesteak as best sandwich, which is madness, and Listerine has been linked

to oral cancer. Thanks to that knowledge I will not be using Listerine when I wake up 2 hours after

finishing this speech. Using the simple syllogism mouthwash causes cancer, cancer causes death,

mouthwash causes death, it is obvious that procrastination saved my life.