I am a terrible procrastinator. Always have been.
Here’s the thing, though. I write for a newspaper. Deadlines! For me, and procrastinators like me, deadlines are both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because they force us to get in gear and actually accomplish something in a timely manner (assuming the deadline is respected). And a curse because–do I really have to explain?
Why do today what one can put off until tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the next? Because one is on deadline, that’s why. And when we get down to the wire, on the day of our deadline, we’ll just put it off until the next hour. And you see, this is where we run into trouble.
It makes absolutely no sense, because I know good and well–as we all do–that my procrastination is going to make me anxious and grumpy. I know that if I buckled down and actually wrote this column by the deadline I’ve been given, I would feel so much happier and energetic and less like a lazy sack of….well. You know.
The funny thing is, though, I’m actually not lazy while I’m procrastinating. I don’t think this is uncommon. When on deadline, I’m getting stuff done. I’m a machine. The closer I get to my deadline, the harder I’m working. But the funny thing is (not so funny to my editor), I’m not actually working on what I’m supposed to be working on. I’m not…you know…writing.
No, I’m not writing, but I’m doing laundry and wiping down my kitchen cabinets and mixing up a blend of water/vinegar/tea tree oil to use for scrubbing my shower. I’m responding to old emails and paying bills. At one point, while NOT writing this very column, I spent time reading a number of online articles on how to be more productive (oh, the irony!). This led me to reading about how to avoid procrastination (how to procrastinate on your procrastinating!), and also how to get more and better sleep. And then it was late, so I went to sleep. I did not sleep any better, despite my thorough sleep research.
And now here I am, my deadline long past.
Part of the problem is–and you procrastinators out there will relate to this–a poor concept of time, or rather, how much time it’s going to take to complete a given task. I think to myself that I will write my column lickety-split once I sit down and actually start writing, so it’s OK if I make a phone call or purge my closet or plan a week’s worth of meals in the meantime. And this may be true, that it would’t take much time to write, except now the baby is sick with an ear infection, and I can’t put him down for his whining. And I’ve been on the phone all day trying to sort out an annoying situation with our insurance. And now something is wrong with the car, and I have to get it looked at. Before long, I am overwhelmed with it all and wondering how in the world I can ever get anything done when I AM ABSOLUTELY BESOTTED BY CATASTROPHE????
Yes, I have listed some legitimate interruptions, but none of them are particularly catastrophic, or even unusual. I have four kids, after all–my life is interruption. I am interrupted all the time, in every activity. We all have our own interruptions. So why in the world would we ever think we could do anything “lickety-split”? Why do we kid ourselves into thinking the task we are putting off is going to be super easy with smooth sailing and no problems whatsoever? Because we are so often ruled by our irrational brains, that is why.
We want to hand in our work on time, but we also want to watch “Downton Abbey.” We have long-term goals and dreams, but in the short term, we’d like to make chocolate chip cookies. We want to read “Anna Karenina”–no really! We do!–but “Bridget Jones’ Diary” is sitting right there, so we put off Tolstoy for another day.
It’s a battle, a bizarre, non-sensical battle, between the rational self who knows what we should be doing and the rewards it will yield, and the irrational self who just doesn’t want to do it, for reasons I don’t quite understand.
The question is, which one is going to win today?
(Betsy Swenson can be reached at sliindelife@gmail.com.)
↧
My procrastination is going to get the best of me
↧