It’s been a while, yeah?

You’re probably wondering what could’ve motivated me to post today. The answer: this video from Ill Doctrine¹, described by Anil Dash² as “the best video blog on the web.” It expresses almost perfectly my attitude when approaching certain tasks, and, in extension, why I stopped writing here. Or more accurately, how I stopped writing, as there was never really a reason why.

Done watching the video? Good.

I have to say I’m curious as to how many people are afflicted with the aforementioned combination of procrastinatory and perfectionist tendencies. Hearing my own symptoms described so accurately by someone else has led me to believe that it may not be as uncommon as I had previously thought.

In high school, I would often put off big projects that I actually cared about because I never felt ready or “inspired” enough to do a good enough job on them. Before I knew it, it’d be the night before the deadline, and I’d only have a few hours to throw something together. Faced with the choice of turning in something half-assed or turning in nothing at all, I often chose the latter, as insane as it sounds. I assure you I am not just making this up to justify all the miscellaneous assignments I have not turned in over the years. Even so, I would never dare to actually use this as an excuse, because I think it ranks lower than “dog ate my homework” on the believability scale. Or at least, that’s what I used to think.

Truth be told, I would willingly take tests or quizzes or do all manner of in-class assignments every day if it meant the abolition of homework, simply because there is no opportunity to procrastinate on something that is due at the end of class. Of course, I realize this would never happen, because one of the primary reasons homework exists is to force you to develop good work habits by intentionally allowing you that opportunity to procrastinate. Unfortunately, the development of good work habits is something that has somehow evaded me throughout my entire academic career, while opportunities to procrastinate rarely go unexploited.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is that every once in a while, I would actually take the other route, and attempt to do whatever I could with the limited amount of time I had left. More often than not, the result would be surprisingly decent, so much so that no one could tell that I hadn’t spent days putting it together. What this tells me is that not only do I procrastinate and have a perfectionist streak, I probably also routinely underestimate my ability to perform up to my own standards.

I’m not sure if I really have a point to make here, but in any case, I feel like I’ve at least struck some sort of blow against my “little hater” by posting this.