Muthoni Mutonyi

What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

I value several things about myself, but one trait stands above the rest: my ability to procrastinate. Everyone else is busy with productivity and hustle culture. I am busy with neither. Procrastination is an art form, and I am its Picasso.

The Beauty of Delay

While others scramble to meet deadlines and tick items off to-do lists, I put things off until the very last minute and feel quite calm about it. A looming deadline and a ticking clock are what get me out of bed in the morning. Or, more accurately, in the afternoon.

The Master of Excuses

I have honed this skill to perfection. My excuses are legendary, my distractions are plentiful, and my ability to find anything at all more interesting than the task at hand is unmatched. If I need to write a report, reorganizing my sock drawer becomes the most pressing matter in the universe. The report waits. The socks have never been better managed.

The Unexpected Benefits

Procrastination is not all bad. It has brought some unexpected benefits into my life.

• Enhanced Creativity: When I finally get around to a task, the pressure produces bursts of creativity I did not know I had. Panic, it turns out, is very inventive.
• Improved Time Management: Procrastination has made me a master of time management. I can fit a week’s worth of work into a single caffeine-fueled night, which is a level of efficiency the planners can only dream of.
• Stress Reduction: It sounds counterintuitive, but procrastination lowers my stress levels. Why worry about something today when you can worry about it tomorrow?

A Word to My Fellow Procrastinators

To my fellow procrastinators, I say this: carry on, slowly. It is what makes us unique, it keeps life interesting, and nobody appreciates a deadline quite like the person meeting it at the eleventh hour.

And to those who judge us, I say this: lighten up. We will get there eventually. Just maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But definitely sometime soon. Maybe.