I dare say that everyone has been in this situation: you’re trying to do homework and then you click on a link, and after a while you are watching a video about how giraffes have a natural sunblock-like substance on their tongues (which they do, by the way). This process is procrastination. It has the possibility to be bad, sure, but it has the possibility to be positive.

Personally, I do my best work when I have limited time. For example, I am writing this less than 12 hours before it is due. Based on that, I decided to ask everyone on my Snapchat, about 60 people, their opinion on procrastination. The question was “Do you tend to put off work? If so, do you do your best work with limited time?” 52 people responded, with 20 of them explaining that they do their best work when putting off work. 16 people said they don’t do their best work. The other 16 said they do not procrastinate, or the work depends on what they are working on.

I’m not arguing that procrastination is better, but it has the possibility to be good because once your deadline is close, you can’t put something off, so you are forced to sit down and think and get in the zone. I have my system, listening to music, sitting down, preferably surrounded by a medium sized crowd, and that creates a zone for me to get my work done. But if I wrote this article two days ago, it wouldn’t have been this good. I wouldn’t have put as much thought into it because, by procrastinating, I was given time to think about the topic. I have thought about this for days before I even typed a word. I understand it doesn’t work this way for everyone. But the point of this article is to demonstrate procrastination does have some benefits, if your style and personally allow it.  Of the people surveyed who said they don’t do satisfactory work when procrastinating, said that they get really stressed. And that makes sense. But others, like myself and the 20 other people I surveyed, thrive under pressure. I thrive under pressure because I know I can’t mess up. This knowledge makes me think and evaluate faster.

It is truly my opinion that procrastination has benefits for certain people; if you are not that person, keep doing what you are doing because it works for you. I want to be an engineer, and part of that is knowing that there are infinite ways of doing something, just find something that works for you. This approach works for me and I get the job done. As long as a procrastinator realizes that, they can adapt their approach to get the job done, whatever it is.