Topic 141: The Joys of Procrastination

Carol:

The Putter Principle And Round Tuits

One of my friends wants to meet me for breakfast next Wednesday at nine a.m. My mornings are pretty full. I usually finish the dog walk and coffee talk by 8:30, but I have an essay to write, revise with Megan and post on the Daily Theme website by our self-imposed ideal 10 a.m. deadline.  My mornings would be more serene  if I just wrote my essays the afternoon before the posting deadline instead of the morning of. Mind you, my writing co-conspirator has mentioned this idea to me several times, especially when I want her to draw a cartoon. She can whip out an essay in 20 minutes, but the cartoons seem to take longer. I like the idea of doing things early, but it almost never works out because of the P word. P in bold, underlined, with !!! or !!!!.
 

I have been a procrastinator all my life, and I would never attach the word “joy” to that particular trait.  A professor from University of Calgary has come up with a mathematical equation to prove that procrastination has nothing to do with laziness or perfectionism, the usual words associated with procrastinators.  According to Professor Piers Steel, who has been studying procrastinators for 10 years (mostly college students), 20% of the population are chronic procrastinators. CP’s tend toward impulsiveness and respond better to short term rather than delayed gratification. (source: Khan)
 

Somewhere in that 20% must be people like me who are not impulsive and do know how to delay gratification  but  are more efficient when we feel that stomach-wrenching pressure and near-panic mental state that comes at the tipping point between “I’ll Get Around To It” and “Do It Now.”  My rationale for waiting until the last minute has less to do with Professor Steel’s mathematical equation and more to do with Parkinson’s Law, first published in a 1955 essay for The Economist: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” (source: Wikipedia).  Here’s an example. Every Thursday, the dog walkers have coffee at my house, so I clean the kitchen before they come. If I do it Wednesday evening,  the chore will take all evening. If I wait until Thursday morning, I can do the same job with the same “quality” in a half-hour. 
 

Perhaps it’s less Parkinson’s Law and more the Putter Principle.  Let’s take another example. Every Thursday, the dog walkers have coffee (blah, blah, blah) and every Thursday I have to rush to write my essay after coffee instead of before the dog walk because I am cleaning the kitchen instead of writing the essay. So, let’s say I start the essay on Wednesday to avoid the stomach-wrenching pressure and near-panic of joyless procrastination. Despite my good intentions and my daughter’s admonitions, I will write a few paragraphs, get up and do a load of wash, sit back down and read my e-mails, reward myself with a half-hour (okay two hours) of genealogy research, pet the dog, look out the window, get ready for dinner, watch some television and… voila.  The Putter Principal.  The Today (Wednesday) referred to at the beginning of the essay is now the Yesterday and the Tomorrow (Thursday) has become the Today, and my daughter is yelling up at me, “Have you finished your essay?
 

My father, who was efficient at everything he did, had a paper weight on his desk.  When I was young I didn’t really understand it. As I look at the paperwork beginning to accumulate on my desk. I could use that paperweight.
 

Sources:
Khan, Urmee. “Academics Invent a Mathematical Equation for Why People Procrastinate.” Science News. The Telegraph. 7 Dec 2008   

Parkinson’s Law. Wikipedia.

Megan:

Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?

My mother is a procrastinator. She claims she works well under pressure, and maybe she does, but I spend a lot of time waiting around for her. In addition to waiting for her to finish these essays (admittedly she has improved in this area), she always has one more thing to do before we can go anywhere. If we’re supposed to leave the house at 11:15, I am standing by the door with the keys in my hand at 11:10. At 11:15 she’ll come down stairs and say, “I just need to pack my lunch” or “Just gotta go to the bathroom” and I’m thinking, “Couldn’t you have done that before??”

In college, I had one semester when I was really on top of my work. I finished term papers weeks in advance and all my friends hated me for being so practical. I was also kind of lonely though towards the end of the semester. There was no one to hang out with because everyone else was studying. I didn’t manage to maintain that level of productivity, but I also can’t remember ever having to stay up all night typing because I’d left something to the last minute. I always finished at least the day before--  too worried there would be a printing problem or my computer would crash to leave it to chance.  It was drummed into me in high school that technical problems are not legitimate excuses because proper planning and time management should take their possibility into account.

My habit of not leaving everything until the last minute came in handy when I worked in the prison. Every time there was some sort of inspection, someone would call the library in a panic wanting to know if we had any reports or statistics to support whatever area in which we were being inspected. If I didn’t have something already in place, I could put it together pretty quickly.  But I think that if you’re the sort of person who “works well under pressure” because you procrastinate to the point that all your work is done under pressure – that’s not actually working well.

I don’t see any benefits to procrastination, which doesn’t mean I never do it. When I otherwise have no deadlines or obligations,  I only do stuff when I’m in the mood. Like everyone else, I have no control over my moods. But unlike other people, my moods can often control when I do basic household chores like laundry and the dishes or when I apply for jobs. I haven't cut my hair in 9 months because I haven't been in the mood.  Sometimes I’m in the mood to go to a movie, but then I change my mind halfway there and turn around. None of this is very important though – no one depends on me for clean clothes and I’ve worked out a system where I never have to do the dishes.  Applying for jobs is different, because finding a job is mandatory. Sometimes I don’t apply until the last minute.

But I’ve learned that if I’m putting off doing something, all the time I’m not doing it is spent worrying about it. And what’s the point of that?