Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we'd have done a better job if only we'd had more time. If you're good at rationalizing you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it's a cheap happy. You're whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower. - Richard O'Connor, PhD in Happy At Last: The Thinking Person's Guide to Finding Joy
Did my professor plant this for me? Or maybe it was my mother. Or my therapist. Hmm, well, I got my paper done in plenty of time to email in before class (if a few hours counts as plenty of time) so I guess I'll start taking his advice into consideration next time I have a paper due. No harm in putting it off, right? ;)
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The flip side of this, of course, is that your grad school paper isn't going to change the world. I find that if I give myself too much time, I will try to write a better paper than I really should, given the other demands on my time. What procrastination allows is for me to compress the available time frame to the point where what I can accomplish in that time is what I should have been shooting for all along.
Of course, if you're really good at setting deadlines, you can do this and still have it done a week before it's due. But that's another skill.
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