(Another old piece tackling another timeless problem--the conflicted, passive-aggressive, supremely cynical mother of many problems.)
Although I had been long seasoned in the practice itself, its name was a relatively late acquisition into my private English vocabulary; it was only when I came to Canada to pursue studies that I first heard the word “procrastination” being used by my new Mexican roommate.
Oddly enough, it was around the same time that this old habit of mine began to strike me as a vice. For, all throughout my education until that point, I had actually taken pride in not touching my lengthy assignments until the day before, and then doing them with such a magnificent outburst of concentration that, in the end, I would get nothing but the highest marks, cast a condescending smile upon the week-long labors of my peers, and know, deep in my heart, that I could have done even better, should I have chosen to give myself a little more time. Alas, early in my first term I had to witness the grim wreck of this supposedly unfailing strategy, after I managed to extract one final short essay out of my uncooperative brain, in the course of a long and truly dark night. The essay was not ill-received; on the contrary, the professor was rather impressed by the effortless (!) flow of my prose, and yet from then on my indulgence in procrastination was somehow, for some mysterious reason, fundamentally changed, as if I had drained the very last drop of oil out of the belly of the earth that night, leaving nothing behind.
Certainly, not that I stopped procrastinating. I remain unwavering as ever when it comes to putting off things that I do not, and often even do, want to do; but now I do it with an assured anticipation of my upcoming defeat, for I no longer believe myself capable of the last-minute miracle. Beforehand, procrastinating never prevented me from succeeding, because I never doubted my ultimate success against all odds. Now I am procrastinating and therefore failing to achieve my goals, because I know failure is inevitable. In fact, I predict that outcome with such certainty that I do not even begin, I do not take a single step towards the goal, as if I were already dead long before the arrival of the deadline. It often happens that I wait for an actual deadline to pass, since it is only when I am literally done with for the purposes of my unattended task, and therefore free from its grip, that I can finally undertake and complete it.
This, in a nutshell, is the anatomy of my malaise, absurd yet undeniable and, unfortunately, no less debilitating than those that would receive more sympathy. Other procrastinators may have a completely different understanding of their own condition, with different motives and symptoms, but the point is, there are so many of us. And I do not invoke our multitudes merely for the cruel comfort of knowing that I am not alone. The phenomenon is far too widespread and deep-rooted not to deserve a fresh assessment, something that goes beyond the reproachful index finger, or the anesthetic jurisdiction of self-help books. For, I assume, we all have been plentifully informed about the blessings that would flow once we subdue this enemy inside; yet, unswayed by such didacticism, we continue to yawn and loiter along our individual paths, with guilt and remorse trailing behind like tin cans tied to a wedding car. A lot of noise and little help for a future that, we suspect, will not be all too bright.
Considering the nebula of urgent, challenging and profoundly senseless duties that today surrounds the average individual, it is possible to count procrastination among our newer afflictions. It is an old one. Much older than the colonial American theologian Jonathan Edwards, who, in his sermon on “Procrastination or the Sin and Folly of Depending on Future Time,”[i] copiously elaborates on how we all might suddenly die and go straight to hell, and therefore how foolish it is to assume that there will always be a tomorrow to attend to pending work. (My only objection to that line of thought would be that I, as a chronic procrastinator, am already in hell, but let me not get too distracted here.) Procrastination is even older than the stoic Roman philosopher Epictetus, who sets aside the notion of tomorrow and reflects, instead, on the nature of today spent in procrastination, putting us to short-lived shame across nineteen centuries: “[W]hen you say, ‘I will begin to pay attention tomorrow,’ you should know that what you are really saying is this: ‘I will be shameless, inopportune, abject today; it will be in the power of others to cause me distress, I will get angry, I will be envious today.’”[ii]
Envy is indeed among the gravest side-effects of procrastination, though perhaps a less obvious one than guilt and remorse. While it is generally unpleasant for most of us to see good things happen to other people, it is far more bitingly offensive to observe anyone, especially an acquaintance, finally show signs of will and perseverance to break free from the routine of procrastination and begin to achieve something, humble as it may be.
And as if that pain were not sufficient, it often happens, in cases where we are acquainted with the object of our envy, that we also have to bear his lengthy lectures about how exactly he managed to stop procrastinating. Of course, the poor wretch might have nothing but good intentions, since he knows all too well the torments of the hell which we once co-habited, but what use is the freedom of another man for the captive left behind? What conclusion to draw other than that I in particular am failing to do something that other people, in similar circumstances, prove capable of?
Thus we slowly drown in our envy, wishing that looks could truly kill, while we enjoy a fresh load of guilt on the side, this time for being so bitterly envious. However difficult to admit, such gut reactions are common enough to have made into a universal joke, the one about how unnecessary it is to keep an armed guard at the edge of a pit imprisoning a bunch of people, since whoever attempts a climb will be conveniently pulled down by his pit-mates – I hope “universal” is not too exaggerated an adjective here, for so far I have only heard Italian, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Canadian, Russian and Mexican variants of the joke.
Why do people procrastinate? It is easy to answer that question if one thinks solely of the daily dose of drudgery that falls to people’s share willy-nilly. Since there is no ultimate escape from it, we procrastinators find solace in at least postponing it a little, or a lot – which, indeed, makes the situation only worse.
However, procrastination appears far more enigmatic when I think of all the good and meaningful things in my life, things that are worth all my time, things that could let me bloom, which I nonetheless refuse to take into my hands until a tomorrow that never comes. I procrastinate not only in vile tasks, but also in those that I feel I have been brought into this existence for. Why is that? The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges wonders whether it might be because “we all have the certainty, deep inside, that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do everything, know all there is to know.”[iii] True, with eternity at his disposal, no man would rush into doing anything.
Or else, the opposite case is true. Procrastination is nothing but a manifestation of man’s deep-running awareness that we are all slowly counting down to our death. Death is a fact I comprehend rationally, but my daily existence depends on my ability to forget or ignore that fact; in procrastinating, however, I acknowledge it indirectly, since death is the other face of every task I shrink away from. If it is a task that I do not place my heart in, I put it off as long as I can, and thus repeat the perennial steps of any animal struggling not to die. And if it is a task that I do hold to my heart, I again put it off as long as I can, probably until my death, for I find the prospects of that other death, in the form of self-fulfilment, more frigthening.
Procrastination may not be a new problem, but it is definitely one that emerges out of luxury, hitting the luckier layers of society; it happens only when one no longer has to worry about the proper shelter, nourishment and safety of his own self and of his loved ones. And perhaps for this reason, it is mistakenly associated with laziness, as if both terms, one more technical and less offensive than the other, were referring to the same basic absence of action. In truth, procrastination does not merely denote an incapability to perform the task at hand in a timely fashion. It rather covers any action that one willfully performs in order to avoid doing the one thing that should be done. To put it more simply, we procrastinators can well be busy people, only occupying ourselves with the wrong business. (I, for instance, am dedicating many precious hours to compose this essay on procrastination, in order to avoid working on my still unfinished thesis.)
A man in the survival mode has no choice but to be in perfect sync with time. He either pulls the trigger at the right instant and returns home with dinner, or he does not. He dwells fully in the present, no parts of his self crumbling away into a past to regret, or a future to fear. When dire needs no longer lay claim on us, however, we remain vulnerable to the invasion of what was and what will be, hence falling out of tune with the now. The time of the procrastinator is indeed twisted; he can never live fully in the present, since, to him, the dreaded then of the deadline is far more present than now. He cannot move from the usual now to then, and then, and then finally ... He rather lets himself get strangled with the anticipation of then, and takes a step backward, whispering but first, but even before that, and finding, with each step, something else to do.
“I am more than willing to do something ... else.” This is the paradoxical mantra of the procrastinator, and I imagine it hides a clue for a means of cheating procrastination back into productivity. Allow me to explain: Task A is something that I, for one reason or another, procrastinate from doing. Fine. If it is the sort of task that either gets done or costs me my low-pay job, it is safe to assume that I will eventually do it. If it is, instead, the sort of long-term, and usually self-imposed, duty that relates to my personal growth and betterment as a human being, chances are I will die before I get to it. Whether I ever complete Task A or not, I will most likely occupy myself in the mean time with Task B. All I need is to choose Task B wisely. For, Task B may be infinitely more complicated and more daring than Task A; regardless of the difficulties, I will do it, as long as I maintain the awareness that it is a distraction and a complete waste of my time; in other words, as long as I do not scare myself away with the thought that Task B is also something that I must do.
I aspire to live the life of a crab: staring ahead of me into a long rigid queue of Tasks A, and strolling sideways in the fairground of Tasks B. That would be a life other than what I should have lived; but it would be a life nonetheless, lived with no smaller number of experiences, and preferable, in any case, to my present state of paralysis. A Task B for each Task A. My own fine art of procrastination, which promises a way, no matter how devious, of letting tomorrow finally come. If it does not work, I shall have to be content with feeling abject, inopportune and envious today.
Postscript:
That there is nothing new under the sun, I was yet again generously proven, this time on-line, just as I was drawing to the end of my present reflections. It turns out, my crabwise treatment for procrastination has already occurred to professor John Perry of Stanford University, under the title of “Structured Procrastination.”[iv] It is not rare for an idea to be begotten by multiple parents in ignorance of each other; I must insist on this, for procrastination and pride are the only sins starting with a “p” that I am guilty of – never plagiarism. This is a moment when I sense most poignantly that the universe operates in mysterious ways against me. Here I take time and effort to develop a novel approach to a common problem, and carefully illustrate it with what seems to be a casual humorous remark about how this essay itself is a product of my procrastination. And then, in no time, I discover professor Perry’s excellent essay, which is even illustrated, yes, with the same sense of humor. He explains how he prefers to write on procrastination in order to procrastinate from his academic duties, while his granddaughter, in helping him out with the design of his web page, professes to procrastinate from her English literature assignment.
No wonder I feel at odds with time. I leave it to the reader to decide whether I shed any light on the issue after all, or simply acquired new reasons to stay paralysed.
[i] Jonathan Edwards, “Procrastination or the Sin and Folly of Depending on Future Time.” Online. Bible Bulletin Board. Internet. 18 Oct. 2009. Available FTP: biblebb.com/files/edwards/procrastination.htm. [ii] From “On Attention” in The Discourses of Epictetus. Ed. by Christopher Gill, translation revised by Robin Hard. London: Everyman, 1995, p. 283. [iii] From “Funes, His Memory” in Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions. Trans. by Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin Books, 1998, p. 135. [iv] John Perry, “Structured Procrastination.” Online. Internet. 19 Oct. 2009. Available FTP: structuredprocrastination.com.