I have been subject to the YouTube black hole too many times. First, you innocently press on a clip of a Vine compilation, have a few laughs and then realize the clip is 12 minutes long. You tell yourself after this one clip you’ll finish your assignment or start studying.  But suddenly, the clip is over and your eyes glaze over to the next suggested clip. Soon, you’re watching a YouTube video about conspiracy theories that ends with you no longer believing the moon landing was real. Now it is 1 a.m. and you finally realize you’ve been a victim to the YouTube black hole of endless clicking.

Like 99 percent of the planet, I too procrastinate. With finals fast approaching, procrastinating is so much more enticing. You can try those applications to block social media for studying, but let’s be real, you’re just going to find a loophole and procrastinate some more.

I’m here to offer a solution that might seem unorthodox. Just give up and accept the procrastination. You need to surrender now so the process will be much less painful. The countless hours spent in the library cramming for finals gives you the right to procrastinate. Giving in to a little procrastinating here and there might lessen the amount of time you spend procrastinating overall. 

There is a certain point when procrastination becomes severely unhealthy. If you find yourself procrastinating for hours at a time, sound the alarm because you’re in deep waters and you won’t make it out alive. At all costs, avoid this unhealthy procrastination.

If you’ve hit this point when you look at the clock and realize you’ve been watching videos of people falling for too long (yes it is possible to watch fail videos for too long) and you have a big assignment that’s due the next day, you’ve entered the point of no return. The only way to recover from this point of no return is to drink coffee and pull an all-nighter.

Don’t you dare look up articles or columns that promise to help you stop procrastinating. Just follow my advice and give in to little spurts of time-wasting to give yourself a break every now and then. 

Looking up a BuzzFeed column that promises 28 ways to stop procrastinating will never help you.  You’re just procrastinating more by looking up these articles. It’s not even fun procrastination, it’s sad wallowing in self-pity procrastinating. No BuzzFeed column, app or 10-day self discovery trip will change your procrastination habits.

Desk organizers, notepads or weird erasers in the shape of fruit can’t fix your problem. Those will only distract you more.

The only way to have the best of both worlds is to allow a little bit of procrastination. So when you’re studying for a calculus final but want to see what Kim Kardashian has been up to, just stop what you’re doing and look at her Instagram. Give up and surrender to procrastination. It will help you in the long run. 

Mary is a freshman in Engineering. 

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