Last week was National Procrastination Week. I would have mentioned it before, but somehow it seemed more appropriate to wait.
Procrastination is one of my favorite things. It is usually seen as a weakness, but in fact it is a strength. If Napoleon had put off invading Russia in 1812, or Hitler had hesitated before charging into Poland in 1939, a vast amount of trouble would have been avoided. You may be able to think of other examples. The opposite of procrastination is precipitation, which my dictionary defines as: “Impulsive action, rush, or haste.”
Socrates was famous for inducing a kind of intellectual paralysis in his fellow Athenians by constantly asking questions, then questioning the answers, and so ad infinitum. What this technique reveals is simply that most of the knowledge we act on is garbage, and most of our “informed decisions” are informed only by ignorance and wishful thinking. This can be irritating. It was so irritating for the citizens of Athens that they killed poor old Socrates, just for pointing out the obvious, namely that they understood nothing and were incapable of thinking straight.
Procrastination happens when we can’t decide what to do, or whether to do anything. We share this habit with the higher animals; just watch a cat trying to decide between two comfortable places to sleep. The cat is thinking about it. She may think about it for hours. Procrastination is a product of the fact that we think. It’s not strong or brave to rush into things without thought or hesitation, it’s stupid. This is especially true of deadly, dangerous things like ordering a double bacon cheeseburger with large fries, starting an international war, or trying to change lanes on the Long Island Expressway.
When I was a kid, parents and teachers accused me of procrastination practically every day. This was fair enough, in so far as I always preferred to think about things for a while before actually doing them. Latin homework was a good example. Sometimes I would consider for days before deciding not to do it, on the entirely rational grounds that nobody but priests had any use for Latin, and I was not cut out to be a priest. That’s not indecision, and it’s certainly not laziness: that’s the brain doing its job – telling you what is important and what is not. A moment’s thought will reveal that most of the things we imagine we should do immediately can be done later or, better still, not done at all.
I have put off some daunting tasks for most of my life, and I’m glad I did – or rather I’m glad I didn’t write an autobiographical novel, learn the piano, or master the French subjunctive tense.
American culture is dead against procrastination. Everything must be done right now, or sooner. The old proverb, probably one of Ben Franklin’s, says: “Procrastination is the thief of time.” But that’s the opposite of the truth. A good procrastinator never wastes any time, because he never wastes a minute on pointless tasks that should never have been started in the first place.
When it comes to procrastination, it’s never too late to start.
Copyright: David Bouchier
