Rachel del Valle | Now or later

Every once in a while, I plan a Saturday where I do absolutely nothing. I stay in my room, catch up on blogs, make a list of all the things I should (or, from a certain perspective, could) be doing and watch the time tick by.

I haven’t done this in a long time. I always find something better to do — go to a cafe and get some work done or get brunch with friends.

But not last Saturday. It had been one of those weeks, and it became one of those days. I had a late start, ate some breakfast, took a shower and never got around to leaving my apartment.

I could tell that it was nice outside — the sun glowed through the window, tempting me with 50-degree weather. But I wouldn’t budge. I just didn’t feel like it. So I stayed inside and rewatched season five of “Mad Men.”

I wish I could say that I loved it, that I basked in my sloth and never looked back, but I didn’t.

The whole afternoon, I felt naggingly guilty: “I really should get started on that paper due in two weeks,” I thought. The simple solution to this would have been to get things done — any “things,” even if they weren’t exactly a priority.

As the sun went down and I was still in my pajamas, I eased into the realization that there was no reason to pretend to be busy and important. I had been swamped this past week, and I would be again soon, but right then, I wasn’t. And that felt nice.

So I got to thinking: what’s the point of getting ahead on your work if you’re just going to do the same thing with the time you “saved?”

At Penn, it’s “work hard, play hard” — but I think that’s just because “work hard, then watch Netflix” isn’t as catchy.

There’s a sense of gratification that comes from checking things off a to-do list, especially early. If I could bottle the flood of dopamine that comes from finishing a task ahead of schedule, I’d never need to eat chocolate again. (I should note that this is something that happens very rarely, usually only when I’ve fooled myself into thinking a deadline is earlier than it actually is.)

But there’s also something to be said for being lazy every once in a while. If you do it right, doing nothing can produce the same sense of relief.

Because sometimes you don’t actually have that much to do. At the end of every horrible week, there’s a calm, and you can either choose to embrace it or unnecessarily stress yourself out about the next thing.

In the middle of a schedule normally fueled by caffeine and adrenaline and blocks on Google Calendar, is it so bad to completely indulge your inner slacker?

I know what you’re thinking: not everyone has the luxury of being unproductive. But there’s always at least a moment when things become a little less overwhelming, and you can pause. Instead of breezing through that lull in order to “get a jump on things,” let it sink in.

Don’t feel guilty about giving yourself a day off. Think about it — would you rather be Ferris Bueller or Cameron Frye?

It’s worth it to re-evaluate the way you work. We get so focused on our to-do lists that we forget there’s more than one way to approach them. It’s an easy pattern to fall into at a school where certain study cultures seem to be the best and only way to get things done.

I’ve recently accepted the fact that I don’t get much done after 11 at night. That used to be my prime time, when I’d crank out everything from term papers to job applications — but then something changed. So I changed my schedule, too.

Waking up early to get things done — something I’d always thought was just for farmers and commuters — is actually really satisfying.

Don’t feel like you have to romanticize the all nighter, or Starbucks coffee, or studying at Van Pelt. Those things work for some people, but not everyone.

Rachel del Valle is a College junior from Newark, N.J. Her email address is rdel@sas.upenn.edu. Follow her @rachelsdelvalle. “Duly Noted” appears every Tuesday.

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