“Hey, it’s good to see you! How have you been?”

“Busy!”

This exchange is common, and I’ve heard it and participated in it so often.

How much does one person fit into their schedule in today’s society? Is procrastination just a byproduct of being busy, or is it something we create and do to escape from the busyness?

To begin, let’s just say that procrastination is something I currently do on the regular. Like so many people in modern society, procrastination is alive and well.

In my experience, it’s a constant process of falling behind and then picking yourself up at the last minute. Inevitably then, it’s a well-deserved break in which we do nothing to start the next thing on the list.

Further down the procrastination rabbit hole, right?

I’m working on my last year at NMU, and I’m realizing how much balance is needed in my life right now. This procrastination lifestyle of semesters past held me back and had a negative impact on grades, GPA, and overall well-being. In conclusion, it sucked. I sucked.

How do I get out of it, exactly? How do we as a population pull ourselves out of the rabbit hole of rushing to get things done? Where does this procrastination struggle even come from?

There’s the classic triangle graph that has “Enough Sleep” in one corner, “Good Grades” in another, and then “Social Life” in the last, with a caption that says “Pick Two.”

It’s somewhat hilarious, but the truth hits hard to college students. In addition, we could even turn the shape into a square with a fourth category, “Work/Job Quality.”

Do I still continue to pick two, or do I attempt to balance all four of them and occasionally drop some of them entirely? That’s not healthy for sure, especially when it comes to sleep.

But why is that the norm today? I understand being busy. I have two jobs, 16 credits, a relationship, and a measly attempt at a social life.

I understand the situation where you’re not getting enough sleep and you crawl to any sort of caffeine for motivation. I understand old friends trying to contact you because you’ve been out of touch.

I understand not getting enough time with your significant other because you’re at one of your jobs. And finally, I understand not having enough time to eat because your schedule just simply says no.

But yet, we’re all there at some time or another. There’s a certain pain of drowning in your schedules and to-do lists, combined with the hunger for more in relationships, sleep, or simply food.

Has this process of being busy just become the norm of what we do to stay afloat?

Procrastination stems from the craving for a feeling of freedom.

A sense of “I don’t have to do this right now, so I’ll do something else, something fun for once because I deserve it.” Inevitably you lose time, and you get stuck right back into the drowning sensation once more.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, and I probably won’t ever stop procrastinating.

But, in a world in which you’re expected to have a full schedule and a balanced life, it seems a little suffocating—maybe too suffocating—to always fall into the cycle.

Personally, I will be making changes. Procrastinating a little bit less and trying to balance my life in healthier ways…

And maybe get enough time to sleep.