We’re hunkering down into the middle of the semester. The days are getting longer (because we’re all just staying up a lot later), the meals are getting unhealthier, the work is getting procrastinated at higher risk than ever before. These few weeks are like the hump day of the semester, and it doesn’t help that spring break lingers tantalizingly close.
A lot of times, I find that it’s easy to lose the motivation to keep slugging onwards. But luckily, I’ve developed a tactic more powerful than the bait of good grades to keep myself chugging along—my Future Famous Self.
My Future Famous Self is a billionaire. She has a mansion on top of a hill with three pools the size of basketball courts. She’s the sort of person that would make Kanye crack and admit that she’s the greatest person in the world, not him. She’s on a first-name basis with the president.
But before you misunderstand me, it’s not the motivation to become my Future Famous Self that keeps me going. No, that would require work, goddammit. That would require effort, and I spend my daily allotted effort just getting out of bed in the morning.
No, my Future Famous Self is my great excuse fodder. You see, there’s no need for me to work hard, because my Future Famous Self has already worked hard. There’s no need to study and get good grades and become successful and responsible and a proper adult, because Future Famous Self has, at some point in her adult-y, successful life, already done that exceptionally.
And, through my imagination, by living vicariously through my Future Famous Self, I can pretend, for a couple minutes of daydream here and there, that I’ve succeeded too. It’s a bit like an alternate reality in which, by some miracle, I have beaten the odds and become a rich, proper adult who knows Ellen Degeneres.
Of course, the pipe dream ends when the person next to me coughs, or the professor clears his throat, and I awake back in lecture again. But I am satisfied. I know that the Future Famous Self in my head has already completed the work I have left to do–indeed, has already sat through this boring lecture and the crummy Section afterwards. So I have no need to force myself to pay attention anymore.
Maybe it’s a weird sort of motivation–the motivation to not do work instead of to sit down like a grown-up and get shit done. But the way I see it, I can slog through a week much easier if my schedule’s full to the brim by putting things off rather than actually doing them. And no, there’s no need to worry about things like grades or preparations for finals that are sure to suffer with my antics. Because, as it were, my Future Famous Self already did great on them.
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