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Procrastination --
the flip side of invention

No student alive can say that, at any one time, they did not feel like doing their homework. We have all stepped into "Procrastination Station" at one point or another. So many distractions exist to encourage the sloth behavior -- the beeps and whirrs of video games, the vibrant TV screen, the open window to the world called the computer. Millions of possibilities exist for people, and especially students, to take advantage of for a short "break." While procrastination is a natural human condition, so much needs to be done -- homework, projects, extra credit, bills, taxes -- in what seems to be ages, but actually exists as tiny moments in a continuous and eternal timeline. However, procrastination is its own contradiction and distraction.

A human's naturally inquisitive mind has been finding ways to pass the hours since the beginning of time. Students play video games, surf the Internet and watch TV. Even adults, no longer in the school system, find ways to "kill time" by shopping, reading, eating or taking a nap. But in the periods of time where humans are not procrastinating, they are ultimately inventing new ways with which to distract themselves from work. Among these inventions is the television; the box that sits in every household, staring back at us as a gray, glinting, glass slate, tempting the unsuspecting passerby to switch on the billions of red, blue and green dots that make up vivid pictures, captivating the eyes, distracting the thought and hypnotizing the mind. This device for procrastination would never have been invented if its inventors had sat back and twiddled their thumbs. Obviously, the television was not intended to be a cause for procrastination, but it eventually became more of a diversion, rather than a convenient way to know the news of the world.

If we were to end procrastination, then all invention will end. There exists a fine balance between the two opposing ideas. Invention ultimately relies on procrastination in that the purpose to invent is to make money. If there is no demand for the invention that will help people pass time, then it will not be worth the time and money the inventor puts into it. Huge corporations would not be so successful if children didn't want their products to play with and distract themselves from homework and chores. However, if inventors procrastinated every moment of the day, nothing would be invented to solve any sort of problem in the world and progress would come to an abrupt halt.

The average student is and always will be apathetic toward homework, slothful toward chores, disrupted by the TV and radio and willing, at any given moment, to pull their gaze from their homework to the flashing AIM windows littering their computer monitors. Usually, humans buy such distracting devices initially not to pass the time with, but as a tool to gain information or to occupy small children while the adult is working and not procrastinating.

No matter how much we avoid it, procrastination is an inevitable part of life. From birth to death, humans will naturally seek ways to waste time that can never and will never be replayed. And so the cycle will continue, of procrastination both powering invention and hindering it.

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