Adrenalin, the best drug of all
I've long been known in the family for leaving things to the last minute.

My sister still tells stories about my packing for family holidays being left too late and on arrival in Lanzarote for a week’s holiday opening my suitcase to find 12 t-shirts, a pair of swimming trunks and one sock.

But it usually works out in the end, as was proved at university. For my final year ‘extended essay’ (6,000 words on South African revolutionary literature – there’s something that’s proved useful) I had yet to start the damn thing two days before it was due in. After a failed attempt to get an extension I set to work.

So, having skimmed the material I set out to gather materials necessary for a full on work session. Two bottles of gin, one bottle of lime juice and a freezer ful of ice cubes, check. A quarter of soapy hash and a packet of pipe filters, check. Cassette of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ on loopback, check. Two biros, check.

I sat down to write (we didn’t have computers in those days) and 41 hours of continuous work later I had it done, albeit with a hand that felt like it had been borrowed by a 13 year old at an underwear convention. I sat in the shower for half an hour getting clean and trying to stop giggling, wobbled down to my tutor and handed it in, before going home to sleep for a day and a bit.

The result? She said it was the best thing that I’d ever written.

Since then I’ve become a journalist and have carried on with the same work habits. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve done that were finished after an all-nighter, although these days without the illicit substances. It always cheers me up to think that people are reading them thinking that they are the result of weeks of careful study when in fact they rely on accumulated experience and the ability to work all night when there’s money involved.

I went out with a doctor once and she told me that such activity is not at all uncommon. Procrastination is in fact a good survival technique; the adrenalin kicks in and the brain starts operating at peak efficiency. Let this be a lesson to you, planning gets you nowhere.
(paxvobiscum, Thu 13 Nov 2008, 21:03, 3 replies)

Did you tell her you wrote it while high?

( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Thu 13 Nov 2008, 21:20, closed)

Amazingly enough, no
I was assuming such behaviour might be frowned upon.
(paxvobiscum, Thu 13 Nov 2008, 21:32, closed)

*click*
Purely for: "a hand that felt like it had been borrowed by a 13 year old at an underwear convention"
( snee held his breath since, Wed 19 Nov 2008, 11:55, closed)