Editor’s Letter- “Start seeing life as an essay deadline”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s the New Year and our Facebook feeds are full of variations on the same article of ‘must-have’ resolutions, normally featuring at least one, probably multiple, nicely worded reminders to “stop procrastinating”. Which is nearly impossible, there always being one more hilarious cat video you just have to watch before you start doing that really important thing.

However one wording stuck with me: “The most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” And yes, it was typed across one of those over-edited scenic photos.

It stuck because it made me see my life as an up-scaled version of my favourite procrastination technique: making lists of what I need to do rather than actually doing it.

A friend once decided she didn’t want to live past the age of 27 for fear of growing old and a desire to follow in the footsteps of Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and the likes by joining the 27 Club.

However, now that 27 has crept into our tangible future we look back and laugh at the possibility that we ever thought we could have achieved all we wanted in life by the age of 27.

Yet I’m 20, the same age as the youngest person on this year’s Forbes 30 under 30 list, Mark Gurman, the senior editor of Apple product news website 9to5Mac where he’s been working nearly five years. Compare that to my life achievements thus far: at best I’ve ticked a series of boxes on the pre- determined educational ladder.

And my excuses of not enough time or money are exactly that, excuses, large scale justifications of life scale procrastination. While I’m at university I say I don’t have the money, I’ll do it when I get a job. When I get a job I’ll say I don’t have the time, I’ll do it when I retire. When I retire I’ll probably just be too old, physically unable to do the bucket list clichés of sky diving or running a marathon.

Life is limited, a truth I think many of us deny due to medical developments, ever-increasing life expectancies and, quite simply, be- cause it’s terrifying.

It’s scary to be reminded that time, in the grand scheme of things, is limited. But being scared isn’t necessarily a bad thing: in fact, I think we need it.

I want to be constantly reminded that my life ultimately has a deadline, just like my essay that’s due in Week 3 that I really should be writing.

Then, maybe, I’ll stop postponing those things that really matter to me in favour of watching one more cat video, stop procrastinating on both scales, and start doing.