When we are students, there are at least 1 million memes  on the internet making fun of finals, making fun of that pile of documents and tasks that keep piling up while you keep piling up numbers of seasons you’ve binged on when watching Netflix. You started season 1 last week and now you are at season 5 already.

At one point you’ve spent 100 hours watching series but yet, you haven’t finished the first page of your essay due way too soon.

But not soon enough.

But hey! It’s funny isn’t it? Mostly a competition of who is the least prepared for that exam and who starts the last. I mean if you start the night before but still end up with a good grade it’s worth more than the one that spent three weeks studying, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

And than you’ll do it again, you’ll make some people angry for succeeding when most people were panicking ages before you even noticed there was an exam coming up. You’ll be fine again and you will do it again. And you will test your limits and discover all the lost subjects that are sleeping on YouTube. But only ever awake when some students get lost in between videos about beauty and dreads and minimalism and food and video games and pranks and DYI you will never do and travel and surf and guitar and fails and sports until you feel drunk of images and flashes and pixels and words.

Until you feel like your brain is finally OFF. Because after studying so much and listening to teachers for so many hours, we deserve it. Don’t we?

Or wait, was it listening or was it scrolling Instagram because the teacher was making you sleepy and you were listening with one ear, catching the most important information with the other one and waiting until you’re home to revise yourself because it will surely be more efficient than listening to all this unimportant stuff in between the important stuff.

It won’t even be at the exam anyway.

So you scroll down your phone, write to your friends about how boring the class is and laugh in the middle of the teacher’s sentence and in between two sips of coffee. But you didn’t laugh because of the teacher. It’s just another joke on 9GAG that stopped being funny three years ago.

Such fun! Much sense! Wow! Many impacts!

But than you’ll keep making fun of it, and you’ll keep scrolling Facebook down while you cook muffins instead of studying. You will go out and push you limits and schedule too many activities for the time you have and you’ll end up putting an All-Nighter with junk food and see your dishes pile up until you’ve made it just on time.

Exam is over. Paper is Given. You’ve earned your master in procrastination.

Don’t get me wrong, some students are truly efficient. Some students are working so hard that they should even learn how to procrastinate from time to time in order to relax and give them-self some times.  I admire you!

But for all of those Kings of procrastination out there; who are you kidding?

I was the queen and proud.  But now that I decided to stop studying in order to pursue my goals, I realized that procrastinating was not an excuse anymore. Because I’m not procrastinating on that paper anymore, but on my own dreams and goals, on my own passions and aspirations.  It’s me against myself.

I’m not going to lose that one.

Have you realized that time is time and even if you have reasons that became socially accepted and even encouraged to procrastinate as a student, wait for the day you realize that you’ve became so good at it that you can’t go back anymore. Wait for the day that school is over and you don’t have a reason to do it anymore, but you still do it instinctively.

We learn to have the best grades with the least possible effort. We learn to spend all these hours making excuses because we are tired, but really we are just ignoring the fact that time is running and that this is our time. Not time we are borrowing to the teacher or wisely saving. We accept easy distractions over mindful decisions and ignore the bigger waves created by our actions.

Tick, Tick, Tick

But what happens when you are graduated and you are in your field of work, when you want to build an enterprise, when you want to create something or be valued for your time and efforts. Are you going to keep procrastinating?

Do you want to bring this habit at work and spend 8 hours doing something that would have taken you six? What if these hours were yours, not the ones of your employer. Let’s stop pretending it’s someone else’s time we are wasting.

Because really it is the same precious time. The same precious time we collectively agreed to accept wasting in between two tasks. The same precious time that could get you further than you could ever imagine if you were to use it.

It is not because school provides us boundaries and fictive deadlines that we should master procrastination in between. Because when you are out there, with no boundaries anymore, you will feel lost.

I felt lost.

There will be no deadline to submit application for work, no deadline to start your business, no deadline to earn enough money to achieve your dreams of travelling, no deadline to achieve the good health you’ve always dreamed of, no deadline to reach your dream.

When there are no deadlines anymore, what is going to keep you from procrastinating?

It seems okay to do something else than what you are obligated to do for school. Perhaps it is. But really, when you have no obligations anymore other than to yourself, it might be a game changer.

In the end, the time you have is always yours, no matter whom you think it is.

Perhaps the most precious resource we have. And we have the power to make the most of it! It starts now. Stop distracting yourself from doing your work with ”Junk food activities” and ultimately stop scrolling down. And when you have the urge to procrastinate, make something healthy out of it:

• Read a book
• Learn something
• Create and inspire
• Make art
• Think, reflect
• Enjoy time with your friends
• Learn how to make fresh pasta
• Catch up with Family
• Dream
• Be kind
• Walk
• Enjoy nature
• Be mindful
• Do Yoga
• Drink two cups of Coffee and listen to music
• Find what has meaning for you
• Make lists; lists are cool

Procrastination is not the problem. The problem is that we keep thinking we are wasting someone else’s time when choosing our ”off” time poorly.

Well, I’m not the queen of procrastination anymore. My title is available. Anyone?

In the end, it is okay to leave work or responsibility aside to feel better afterward. We should learn how to make time for ourselves because it would be tragic if we were all workaholic. But we have to be reminded that everything we do matter. We have to remind ourselves about our goals and know that all the things we do are either bringing us up or keeping us stuck.

Pchiissst: That article didn’t count as procrastination! Héhé!