How To: Procrastinate Like Anna

In short: I put the pro in procrastination. I am a master procrastinator. I’m almost tempted to say “I will teach you how to procrastinate like there’s no tomorrow”, but the cool thing about procrastination is that there always is a tomorrow. A tomorrow, another week, another month. Or another minute, another hour. Whatever you do, there is always more time for you to do it.

My friend Miriam once said a phrase that has stuck in my mind: you always have the most time when you don’t have any. Now I don’t know if she was actually quoting someone else, but I do know that she knows what she’s talking about. She said this to me while she was in a period of learning for important exams. Point in case: she is out dousing her neurons with alcohol at the very moment I’m writing this and she’s got exams coming up in January. So babe, don’t read on in this post, because you already know everything I could possibly teach here. That and you probably don’t care for reading on in the rantings of someone whom you now hate for exposing you. Sorry, but you know how it is: those who can do, do, those who can’t, teach.

So ladies and gents, I am going to teach you how to procrastinate like a pro. Like me. First of all: I put off writing this post for about 5 days. I *was* on the internet occasionally during this time, but what did I do? That’s right: I watched Lauren Graham be silly on the Ellen Show, I watched What the Buck on YouTube, I tended to my Neopets Guild because I’m Guild Leader (right now, all the nerds in the world are falling in love with me… all over again) and I tried to figure out internet banking and then realised I needed a PIN I didn’t have.

Procrastination Lesson #1: roughly go in the direction of what you are actually trying to accomplish, then wildly digress and do all the fun stuff you don’t need to do right now. “But what about the guilty conscience I get from not doing something right away?” you ask me? My dears, if procrastinating like a pro is good for anything, then it’s making up excuses and weaseling yourself out of responsibility and a guilty conscience. Here, I’ll show you: Lauren Graham on the Ellen Show? I need to learn how to do funny interviews and I need to be up to date on stars and their utterings if I wanna be a film journalist! What the Buck on YouTube? I’m so stressed right now, I think I’m allowed a 5 minute laughing break. And besides, that guy represents the people’s feelings about all the sillyness in the celebrity world, so again, I need to be at that kind of pulse if I want to be a self-respecting journalist. The Neopets Guild? I’m learning how to do html! Internet banking? Actually helpful. But you didn’t get anywhere?! Hey, at least I tried, ok?!!

See how easy it is? Now you try it.

Procrastination Lesson #2: get into your head that you work better under pressure. That assignment due in two weeks? Normal people plan like this: Ok, I have about 5 days to research it, then I’ll write a rough draft, let it sit for 2 days and then get back to it and write the master copy of it. Then I’ll be able to get it proof-read before handing it in. Procrastinators also think like this, but then we instantly proceed to blow such good plans. After all, we work better under pressure! So this week, while I still can, I will go to the movies twice, to Starbucks once, I’ll get a pedicure (mens sana in corpore sano – that’s your excuse for things like that) and finish that book I’m reading. The week after that, yeah, you should research. But writing a rough draft? I’ll just quote Lina Lamont: “am I dumb or somethin’?” Of course not. Which brings me to:

Procrastination Lesson #3: get into your head that you’re a genius. To hell with rough drafts! You’re smart enough to get it right the first time and you don’t need proof-readers either. If you do, prey on people who will not say no and, even better, accept to do it until 9:30am (you’ve emailed it to them at 10pm the night before) because they love you too much to see you fail because “you work better under pressure” and they secretly know that’s not… entirely… true. Family members are great for that sort of job. Me, I always turn to my father. Thanks daddy, you’re awesome! I suppose boyfriends and girlfriends are also great at this sort of thing, but if you do it too much, they might be tempted to ditch you. Families can’t do that. But if you’re family does, I request you not show them this blog. This is all at your own risk.

By the way, this little trick works for anything: line-bashing, revising mathematical formulas, audition tapes, you name it, I guarantee it’ll work.

Procrastination Lesson #4: be confident. Being a good procrastinator requires one major attribute: confidence. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, you won’t be able to pull it off. You’ve got to be certain that you’re smart enough, fast enough, eloquent enough and pretty enough to get it done in time. Procrastinators as I define them are not late-comers! Why? Simple: because someone smart, fast, eloquent and pretty cannot be the loser a late-comer is. And because confidence is key, you don’t want to ruin all that great confidence you just built up by being late, for anything. The trick is to procrastinate, get the most out of your fun time and still get your shit done.

Procrastination Lesson #4: be tough. If you’re gonna procrastinate, you can’t deny the unexpected. Unexpected occurences such as twisted ankles, the flu, barfing dogs and sobbing girlfriends have to be expected and factored in. If they do catch you unaware, you will have to be tough. You will have to suck it up and go do your presentation with a runny nose, a sore throat and a 39° fever (the presentation on religious feasts in Ancien Egypt, ahh, good memory). Because let’s face it, if you hadn’t procrastinated your immune system wouldn’t have crashed the minute you finished your presentation at home. Can’t have your cake and eat it, sorry. Tough love baby.

All these things are the reason Miriam always does great in her exams. It’s the reason I’ve not once handed something in late. Everytime I “forgot my homework at home” I just couldn’t be bothered to do it. I didn’t do it late, I just didn’t do it, at all. But that was the olden days, the school days and it doesn’t happen anymore. Well except maybe once with a certain professor I can’t stand. Oh well.

So now you’ve learned How To Procrastinate Like Anna. I hope it will get you as far as it has gotten me. Unfortunately, I seldom get to practice my art these days. They’re just too full of things I actually fully enjoy doing and they’re also too full of responsibilities that involve other people and I don’t let others down if I can at all help it. But I am glad I got to pass my knowledge on to you. Procrastinating has taught me a lot and I hope it will teach you a lot too. I also hope that reading this post was you procrastinating. If so, you’re on the right path.

Live long and prosper, come again,

Anna 

How To: Successfully Trash a Hotel Room in 30 Minutes or Less

I’ve just come back from a trip to Karlsruhe, where I attended the wonderful 3rd Annual 70mm-Todd-AO festival in the Schauburg theatre. You can read all about it on my main blog, but this post here is about a very, very impressive talent I have: trash rooms. The road to hell is paved with good intentions they say, but this road I’ve chosen isn’t just paved with them, it’s in 24-karat gold with platinum inlays and a few diamonds just for fun. No matter how good my intentions, I always end up with messy rooms. When I’m at home and tidy up, it lasts 36 hours at the most before everything looks like an atom bomb went off, again. So it only makes sense that when I’m somewhere for a limited period of time only, my room-trashing-abilities are sped up as well. I spent 3 days in Karlsruhe. After the first day, my room was rock-star-hotel-room-trashing worthy. I checked in, went to the cinema for about 8 hours, came back and voilà! I was lying in bed, half an hour later and it seemed like Axel Rose and Marilyn Manson had had an orgy and a birthday party in my room.

I’m not particularly proud of this talent, but hey, gotta make lemonade, right? So I decided to create this blog and plaster it with step-by-step instructions and pictures. Onwards ho then towards your first How To. You will feel like a rock star and it’s hangover free!

First picture: the hallway

It’s important to make a good entrance and what better way to do that, than to start the mess upon walking in? First of all let me say that no self-respecting mess can be achieved without accessories. Being a girl, I’m lucky enough to always carry a handbag, which is an excellent prop for what we have in mind here. Be wary of inside pockets that allow you to neatly organise the contents of your bag and make sure you’re using a soft bag, because plumping it down at the right speed will lead to some spillage, which is one of our many goals here. If you’re a guy, make sure to have a coat/jacket with large pockets so that when you carelessly throw it down, at least your wallet, mobile phone, loose change and keys will spill appropriately. Or something like that. I’m not a guy!

As you can see from the picture however, I only managed a half-arsed job here: nothing ended up on the floor (more about that later). I’m not too proud, but I can accept it. I did however manage to get out my wallet, an almost empty pack of cough gummies and my water bottle. Then I took out my camera and tossed its cover next to, what’s that? Pink socks! I get extra points for this: the more items you manage to put in places where they are potentially gross (next to the bottle) and make no sense being there, the better. In a hotel room, you’ve got the added “ick-factor” the maid will experience when she has to tidy your room. The higher the ick-factor, the closer you’ve come to really trashing your room. Socks you’ve just had to chisel out of your shoes because you’ve worn them for 8 hours straight are a great instrument.

Now let us move further into the room, towards your luggage

Now I’m not completely irresponsible. All the stuff you can see in my trolley was folded and organised when I packed. But here’s how to undo all that goodness in the blink of an eye (takes approximately 2-3 minutes, so don’t be lazy): throw the trolley on the seat, open it up quickly while everything is loose inside, step back to let whatever’s spilling spill (in my case, a newspaper stuffed inside while on the train), root frantically through the contents of the trolley in search of a small item (preferably in the dominant colour of your things, makes it harder to find) and mush everything up, shuffling it from side to side until nothing is folded or neatly stacked anymore. You can’t have that in a trashed room, now can you? Please notice my red Chucks beside the gray seat: expertly taken off my feet using only a lot of impatience and the other foot – no hands or they won’t fly and flip over! Scattered shoes are a must in every trashed room. The further apart, actually, the better. I didn’t do suuuch a great job here, but you get the idea.

Once you’ve covered the area in and around your luggage, you need to take care of the rest of the room – usually, no preparation is needed beforehand for this, but here’s a little extra tip if you want to make extra sure you’ll have stuff to senselessly scatter: pack one or two items from your fresh laundry that aren’t fully dried yet (works like a charm if you’ve got, like I do, only a damp cellar to hang your laundry to “dry”) and take them out immediately upon arrival, hanging them over chairs and anything you can find. In my case, the item was a blue jeans, which you can see next to the TV. Once you’ve “settled” in the room however, it’s crucial to take out of your bag all the items that you will need in the next few days that aren’t clothes and strategically place them on shelves, in open cupboards and on top of each other.

Last but not least, the bed and its surrounding area.

This is my bed after a mere 10 minutes spent in it, tossing and turning and deciding I was still hungry and thirsty and needed to get my camera to document the nuclear war zone I’d just turned my room into. Pretty messed up already, don’t you think? It looked worst after a night’s sleep in it (I’m good like that) but I didn’t take a picture in the morning because I couldn’t remember my mind after only 6 hours of sleep and was lucky to even know how to shower (though I did get the levers mixed up and got icy water splashed right in my face as I thought I was changing the temperature). But let’s look at what we’ve got so far. Nosespray and rumpled tissue on headrest? Check. Half full glass of apple juice? Check. Though I just noticed a coaster, not good. I don’t recommend using one. Box of biscuits with cover lying beside it (not in the bin where it belongs)? Check. Box of Oropax next to food? Check!

So that’s it folks, now you know How To Successfully Trash a Room in 30 Minutes or Less. Feel like a rock star, avoid the hangover and be happy, because once the maid has tidied your room, you get to start all over! My final tip: don’t let your guilty conscience think about that poor, underpaid, overworked maid who has to clean up your mess or you won’t succeed in your endeavour to trash a room. And you so want that room trashed. I know you do, you might as well admit it.

I hope to see you again for the next How To, peace out

Anna