There’s a difference between procrastinating and taking your Sweet Ass Time. Procrastination is the byproduct of hesitation, insecurity, anxiety, it is a divestment from your future self for the comfort that the present absence of agency provides. But taking your Sweet Ass Time requires patience, calculation, assurance. It is a biding of time, and when that time is measured with intention, it can be a better move than finishing far ahead of schedule.
Not recognizing the difference between procrastinating and taking your Sweet Ass Time is the reason why, when watching that scene on Planet Earth where the cheetah is lingering around a bunch of defenseless wildebeests I want to scream at the screen like “What the fuck are you waiting for????” But it doesn’t take Sigourney Weaver to tell you that the cheetah is just taking his Sweet Ass Time, and actually waiting for the Sweetest Ass Moment. Bum-rushing the herd would result in an intense chase that expends more energy than the prospective meal would provide, and probably a hoof to the face. I always thought that cheetahs were terrible at stealth, because in these nature shows they just sit there until one of the members of the herd notices him, and only when they all start Losing Their Shit does he start dashing ahead.
Knowing how to dash ahead while everyone else is Losing Their Shit has got to be one of the greatest lessons that nature can teach us. First and foremost, it means not being one of the ones Losing Their Shit at that Sweetest Ass Moment. But it also means not being over-prepared, or if you’re a cheetah, not doing “just in case” hunts when you’re not even hungry yet. It’s that growl in the belly that lets you know that the last minute is approaching – the recognition that a failed hunt could mean starvation that compels that extra motivation that evolved you into the fastest mammal on the planet.
But what we can learn from the cheetah isn’t just the moment of the hunt, but also what he’s doing when he’s not hunting. This is the ultimate reward of taking your Sweet Ass Time instead of Losing Your Shit, which is known across the universe as Chilling The Fuck Out. Because cheetahs are not procrastinating, they are not spending every waking moment that they’re not hunting consumed with guilt for not hunting, or wondering if they’re losing their edge and self-apologizing like “I only got that wildebeest because it was a baby.” They’re not strategizing their next hunt or wasting all their time and energy trying to figure out how to “optimize” their hunting methods. Instead, they’re Chilling The Fuck Out, which means literally lying there and doing nothing but being a cheetah and being okay with that.
So the next time someone accuses you of doing something at the very last minute, just remember that you’re a fucking cheetah.