Finally getting around to writing about procrastination

(759 words)

My friend Jim S. of Bovard was putting off more pressing matters to read a story about procrastination cures when, alas, his mind began to drift.

Was reading a story about how to stop wasting time a waste of time?

“It made me wonder how many hours I’ve spent reading about procrastination cures while I should have been doing something else. Then I thought, ‘This sounds like a topic that Chris has probably addressed.’”

Just marvel at the foundational elements in my friend’s note. There is wistfulness, fledgling determination, folly, distraction, avoidance, defeat…

And it all leads straight to thoughts of me!

I was in the middle of some important deadline research when I saw his note, so I was delighted by the excuse to put it off.

Procrastination? I felt sure I’d have tackled that one. I couldn’t think of a single personal or professional flaw I hadn’t exposed to readers, once even posting a story under the daring headline, “Exposing myself to high school students,” which isn’t what you think (see link below).

This is the 1,975 blog I’ve posted since 2008 when I began blogging, which in hindsight feels like a marathon procrastination from career advancement. Sort of like an extended gap decade with no end in sight.

Certainly, I’d have written one measly story about procrastination.

In fact, no. This is the first. And I say that with the understanding that this won’t qualify as the first until it’s actually finished. The odds of me becoming distracted and either going for a walk and not returning or just deciding to succumb to the temptations of the morning drunk are alarmingly high.

I consider myself a situational procrastinator. It’s maybe the only thing I have in common with Napoleon, the fabled Emperor of France from 1804-1814. 

He wouldn’t hesitate to declare war, but would dawdle over opening his mail, which he did maybe once a month. He did so because he was convinced that by the time he read any letter the problem it addressed would have been resolved by a subordinate.

In that regard we’re opposites. I never declare war, but I obsessively check my email every 4  minutes ‘cause you never know when some general might seek my advice on a tricky Austerlitz flanking maneuver.

A situational procrastinator puts off distasteful duties that are apt to get done by others while instead embracing fun that should be experienced first hand right away.

I became a situational procrastinator in Athens, Ohio, 30 years ago. It was prior to one house party when I got into an argument with a house manager over my refusal to clean a basement window in a room known for rowdy behavior. I objected on the grounds it made no sense to clean a window that might in two hours no longer exist in one piece.

Turns out I was a prophet. Indeed, the window did get smashed.

On purpose.

By me. 

It was a great party.

I today procrastinate over attending parties because I recall what a great party’s all about and I haven’t been to one in 30 years.

Other examples:

I put off watching new shows until a critical mass of tasteful friends tell me its worth it. But I immediately tune into all-time favorite movies like “A Few Good Men”  to watch where Col. Jessup tells off the pansy Tom Cruise character. 

I put off things like mowing the yard or shoveling the snow on the grounds global warming will soon eliminate the timeliness for such drudgery. But I immediately say yes to any intimacy offered by the frisky missus knowing my principled objections to common housework may one day lead to spousal cooling and the withholding of such favors. 

I put off thinking about what one has to do with the other because I can’t handle the truth.

I put off paying bills, doing taxes, seeing doctors and while I’ll drop everything to spend time with an old friend I put off returning their calls because I hate talking on the phone.

Yet I’ll always find time to read, watch baseball, play with a child or listen to a friendly stranger. 

Life is short and is beset with too many chores and bores not to engage in situational procrastinations.

I’d like to thank you for putting off some of life’s tediums to spend time here with me.

I enjoy the blog and will never delay in its production.

For instance, this one only took two snappy hours to write.

Two hours and 11 years.

Related …

Exposing myself to high school students

No. 1 Party Boy from the No. 1 Party School

I may never cut my grass again

Drunk on the job

Now’s the time to buy my book

Smart phones, stupid people

Napoleon made it a practice to open and read his mail just once a month, assured the leisurely passage of time would resolve the urgency of every issue.

I check my e-mail about once every 12 minutes.

In my life’s history of communication, not once have I received a note that could be considered Napoleonic. It’s grocery notes, jokes, spam or e-bills notifications.

Yet, I persist in checking it as if I expect some distant general to zip me an urgent e-mail asking me how he should defend Leipzig.

And, honest, I’m not that bad. I can unplug without trembling withdrawal. Our daughters enjoyed the Rapunzel-inspired “Tangled” so much with Mom last week they wanted to take me to see it. It was great, too.

Not great enough, apparently, to hold the attention of two adults I saw basking in the warm glow of smart phone activity.

This is bound to be another battle in the ceaseless civility wars. That’s twice I’ve been to movies recently and been distracted by the firefly-like activity of a smart phone bouncing about in the darkness as I’m trying to concentrate on the picture.

I guess when movies aren’t compelling enough, people are going to drift to their smart phones to play games, check e-mails and tweet scene-by-scene micro-reviews for morons.

Who knows? Maybe these people who sneak away to Disney matinees are really busy professionals who need to monitor office activities.

Someday, just of the fun of it, I’m going to stand on a busy street corner and shout into my cell phone, “No! No! No! The cranial incision needs to be made behind the left ear, you idiot! The left ear!”

But that’s a story for another day.

What’s amazing to me is with this constant whirlwind of e-mail activity, very few people on the planet take even a nano-second to respond to things that are important to me.

I’ve spent many years sending out various book proposals or story ideas to countless big shots in the hopes they’ll call me right back and inform me they want to enrich me with money and fame.

It’s never happened. That’s not surprising. Trying to get any book published these days without the benefit of being named Palin or Khardashian is a daunting task.

What is surprising is how few of these well-connected industry types ever bother to take the time to type even two letters -- NO -- to convey their disinterest. Two other letters -- FU -- would certainly get the message across.

As few of them bother to respond, I’ve taken to convincing myself they are too incapacitated by the exposure to my genius to be able to initiate simple motor skills like typing.

Try this defense mechanism yourself. I find it helps.

There’s a remote chance maybe they are like me and don’t have smart phones. Maybe that’s impeding my chances for success.

In fact, I have a very stupid phone. Ugly, too. It can’t text. It can’t take snapshots. God help me if I’m stuck in traffic and need to look at some pornography.

I was recently in New York and surrounded by pretty people with smart phones. Merge their genetics with their communication devices and it would have been a table full of really pretty Einsteins.

My 4-year-old Verizon flip phone is so ugly and awkward I didn’t dare take it out in front of New Yorkers.

As my fortunes seem to be on the uptick, the siren call of the smart phone beckons -- and there has to be a nifty siren app, too

I think I can justify it now, too. But do I really need it?

I already spend way too much time checking who’s reading the places that run my blog (thanks, my friends!), and reading re-runs of the news I’d read two hours previously. It’s just a big waste of time and who has time for that?

A smart phone or an iPad wouldn’t give me more time to do what I really want to do (read, enjoy the family, guzzle hootch). In fact, those devices would take away from those activities.

It’s something I need to think about -- but not now.

Right now I have to check my e-mail. It’s been about 16 minutes and I’m pretty sure something really, really important is starting to itch in my in-box.

It’s bound to happen one of these decades.