In Praise of Procrastination: Why wasting time can actually be
a good thing
By Lise Funderburg
SELF
September 2003
When I sit down at my desk – especially if I'm starting a writing assignment
or if the one I'm wrestling with is going poorly—I am consumed (consumed!)
by the acute and irrepressible need to get up again. I have to go to the
kitchen, as if something new might have found its way into the refrigerator
since I last looked 20 minutes before. I must see if the mail has come, or
the paper, which I then read. I'll wander into the bathroom, lean against
the sink and examine the landscape of my face in the mirror. I look for and
attack blemishes, tweeze wayward eyebrow hairs and occasionally give my teeth
a good floss. The cruddy buildup at the base of my electric toothbrush (the
origin of which I try hard not to think about) invariably needs cleaning.
It's also essential that I go to the gym, which is near the fruit seller,
which is up the road from the discount nursery. In that same loop are the
cardboard-recycling plant, the liquor store and the cheap gas station. If
I have enough quarters, I'll vacuum the car, then pay $6 to be transported
through the Lammscloth automatic car wash.
I've always assumed that procrastination signals various emotional maladies:
an anxious spirit, fear of conflict and failure, a self-sabotaging perfectionism
(if you can't do it right, why bother at all?) or the delusional hope against
hope that tomorrow will be a better day to start X or launch into Y. While
no one who knows me well has ever accused me of being a perfectionist, every
other one of these explanations applies to my own escapist proclivities to
some degree or another. Worse, when I find myself slacking off, engaged in
something like waterproofing all my winter shoes when I really should be
writing, I am beset by guilt. What I'm doing is wrong. And not just because
I'm wasting time that could be spent on priority project A, but because I
believe that good people are defined not only by output but by method. Growing
up, the prevailing ethos at home held that the best way to do anything was
in a straight line. Thus, my zigzagging feels to me like a moral infraction.
Yet I know I couldn't sustain as many friendships or keep my house in order
or my thank-you notes up to date if I didn't do these things when I should
be setting up interviews or reading research files. The fact is, goofing
off works for me as much, if not more, than it does against me. My procrastination
efforts feed my gluttonous appetite for enjoying life, but beyond that, they
can also be shockingly productive. I'll do anything to put off writing, and
I'll do it well. The piles of Polarfleece hats my sister and I sewed for
a winter crafts fair sold out completely. The merits of my dried cherry scones
are widely known. I've won first prize for my quilting and an honorable mention
in a citywide gardening competition.
Even more valuable, perhaps, is the way procrastinating puts whatever real
project is at hand on simmer. When I'm stuck on the first sentence of an
article, mindless activities like 'weeding my flower patch present an opportunity
for reflection. It's as if certain thoughts have to find me and, once they
do, can latch on only if I've left enough mental space for them. I've sorted
out story structures while being lulled by the swish-swish of the car wash.
I've solved financial problems on the treadmill. I've figured out how to
end arguments with loved ones while waiting in line to pay for produce.
It's true that I'm expending energy on these diversions, but I am also building
up steam. I may hide from certain tasks with meticulously maintained pedicures
and overpruned crab apple trees, but at some point, I can rewire no more
lamps, surf no more websites, eat no more snacks. All that's left, finally,
is the urge to write. And once I start, once I've broken through the repellent
blank-ness of the page, I no longer need to get up from my chair at every
turn. I still get distracted, but the diversions are fewer and farther between.
Maybe all of my sidestepping is simply the long and snaky path I need to
take to arrive at the destination that matters most—creative fulfillment
and, of course, the paycheck that puts food on my table. At least that's
what I tell myself. After half a lifetime of perfecting the dilly and honing
the dally, it's clear that, in the words of my favorite philosopher—basketball
player Alien Iverson, "it's all good." Or, more accurately, it's
all productive. There may be a better way to phrase that thought, but right
now I've got to go plant the daylilies.