A Journal about: PRO-Crastination
There’s probably nothing more ironic than waiting 3 months to write a journal entry about procrastination. Maybe there’s a little self-justification going on here, but in fact, I’ve come to the belief that there is a natural rhythm and flow to the pace of developing interesting and well-formed thoughts. Like babies, or seeds, or whiskey, or trees, or skills, or relationships, or pull-ups, or art, or a strategy, etc. There are some things that, despite our technology and modern sense of the need to keep up a ridiculous pace, just require a mixture of steady effort and time in order to become anything significant.
As school becomes an ever-distant reflection in the rearview mirror of my life, I realize how much I enjoyed “studying” things. Wrestling with a question, searching for answers in random places. With the glut of media pouring into my life, I’m often prompted and directed into areas of interest by my podcast hosts, but this summer I turned their voices down a bit and let my own questions bubble up, and then began to informally study and observe my very own question throughout the many conversations, books, and experiences that make up my daily life. For this study, the question has been, “What is procrastination, and is it bad or good?”
I can answer the second part immediately. Very few things are inherently bad or good, and human discernment in these matters is tragically ill-informed. So, it’s best to assume that the majority of issues possess two sides, one Generative and the other De-generative. As C.S. Lewis was famous for saying, “The work of the devil is to make us believe that ordinary things are wholly good or wholly evil.” (paraphrase). I think this word, “Procrastination”, has been culturally sanctioned as a “bad” thing, and so I’m not going to waste too much typeface on all of our shared presuppositions. Picture the lazy teenager who denies that homework even exists, preferring to listen to raw music and draw sketches of supposed “album covers” for his band’s next release, only to find his dutiful, blue-collar father standing in the door reminding him that his history exam is due at the end of the week. End scene, cut to credits, and condemn that kid’s procrastination.
But what if that kid becomes a member of the Rolling Stones?
Do we still damn his procrastination? Or do we remark on his “remarkable ability and forethought to buck the system.” or his “visionary poetry in redefining music.” I’m pretty sure, and you can check on this for yourself, but if I go backward through the narratives of my muses and heroes, there were always some sharp turns away from convention that required nothing less than a stark dropping out from what they were doing. From Van Gogh to Wendell Berry, you’ll see a moment where they let so-called "duty" slip as they slide into something truly deep, thoughtful, grand, and world-changing.
This is NOT a journal to dismiss work and effort. On the contrary, it takes momentous work and effort, not to mention courage and raw guts to embrace procrastination, and then when the insight and vision do arrive, that’s when the work really begins.
Why this journal finally got written…
Here’s a personal anecdote. Last year, I engaged in some conversations with my compadres at work that, if I had had my way, could have ended in the conclusions that are just now arriving 14 months later. At first turn, I’m redfaced about how long this has taken, but moments later I’m realizing that what could have been decided a year ago would have felt insincere. I keep spotty journals (ok, that’s maybe not the right kind of procrastination) and turned back to February of 2023 to go gloat at my forethought and prophetic intuition. When I arrived at the pages I was awestruck at how small a vision I had cast there. My best-case scenario was a tiny and practical dream compared to what I feel the potential and clarity are today. You see, while we were waiting, and arguing, and talking, and planning, and procrastinating, the idea matured in two ways.
First, it sprouted roots of deeper conviction. The clarity leaped out of each person’s individual silo and became a group-level conviction. Old Stephen Covey is dead right, “you can't be efficient with people, only effective.” I would add “...and by inefficient, I mean, people are SLOW to change or adopt new beliefs. Effectiveness requires patience and enough maturity to let people procrastinate through those changes.” I cannot express with enough bold language how much better it is to work toward a goal alongside people who believe in that goal for themselves in their own words and in their own way. It’s sailing with the wind.
Secondly, the idea itself was refined. I’ll be the first to admit that like any ego-centric artist, I love the ideas I create. I love my solutions, my strategies, my words, my vision statements. But, and I say this with bruised knuckles and a sore back, I have been humbled to realize that these are merely sparks and embers. They are something small and temporary, cast into what may appear to be a stack of potential energy outside of me (usually in the minds and hearts of others). Usually, I just hope to God that it catches fire. Sometimes it doesn’t, rarely does it ignite quickly, and mostly what happens is a smoldering effect that takes 14 months to actually catch on and begin to burn. A great counselor of mine has said, “You can never tell someone what to think, even if they agree with you, they won’t truly believe it. All you can do is keep walking with them until they discover and believe it for themselves. Only then is that truth useful and meaningful in their lives.” Most wisdom, change, and truth take time to catch on. All we can hope to do is keep breathing on it so that the ember doesn’t die too soon. But what happens when it does catch is transformative. The ember is forgotten as the blaze takes form and shape. It illuminates your surroundings, reveals new context, warms the people up who are standing near it, and maybe even lights up a new face or two. A fire is so much more effective than an ember, but most of us want the ember to do all the work of generating warmth and light.
Pro
I titled this journal with some funny wordplay, “Pro” being the emphasis because “a professional is any person who earns their living from a specified activity.” I say this because I believe that procrastination is inherently important to life, anyone’s life. I believe that unless we obliterate urgency and duty in some portion of our lives, we lose all access to mystery and to a whole cadre of opportunities that may be just waiting beyond the next door to capture and inspire us and the people around us. I use “Pro” because so many professionals I see, especially entrepreneurs (and I’m in there too), work long hard hours to create a new cage of growth and systems and processes that ultimately become so important to us that we would never shirk our duties to the thing we have built. Not even for a second. And thereby we negate the whole reason we started our own gig in the first place! Remember, this is a Journal, and so I’m coming to this conclusion for myself, right now, as I write this, as a part of my own study.
Crastination
The word "procrastination" comes from the Latin verb procrastinare, which means "to put off until tomorrow". And I think that’s important to know because we can name a couple of important issues here. Firstly, it does not mean, “to put off forever”. That’s forgetfulness. So this begs the question, “Is everything I’m doing so important that it MUST be done today?” And right there we see the light through the cracks. There are some things that have to happen today, but that is not everything, and this means that we can allow some things to simmer and settle. We can let time do some of our work for us.
I’ve observed this in my own brain long before Tim Urban gave his famous TED Talk on the subject, but there is something that happens to an idea when I park it on the back shelf for a time. Not too long, or else it’s forgotten, but for a little while at least. When I leave some work alone, it begins to form and refine somewhere in my subconscious. This takes very little caloric energy and I cannot begin to count the number of times I have heroically started a complex project, waited one week out of sheer desperation, and come back to it with nearly the whole thing formulated and ready to come out. It’s a miracle. And one of the great wonders is that by the time this phenomenon does occur, nothing has dramatically changed in the broader world. As much as I scold these ideas for “showing up late”, there is rarely ever anything external that’s shaking its finger quite as hard as I am at this new birth of work taking so long.
That brings me here:
Grace and procrastination are important to give and to receive. In myself, allowing time to wonder, to percolate, to relieve Mr. Urgency of his constant and flagrant requests to hop behind the steering wheel of my own mind and soul. To begin to value procrastination rather than abhorring and ignoring it.
But at the same time, and in even greater measures, I think we must do the same for others. Are we encouraging people to procrastinate? To leave something until it’s “ready”. I know that when I buy whiskey, it’s typically 4-12 years old, and so I pay extra for slower progress on a regular basis, but to the people near me, it is always “hurry up!” which is not the solution to things like babies, or seeds, or whiskey, or trees, or skills, or relationships, or pullups, or art, or a strategy, etc. What would my life be like if I saw myself less like a taskmaster and more like a gardener, or a distillery manager, or a pregnant woman waiting expectantly for unexpected things to turn up at their appropriate time?
Take a deep breath. Slow down. Thank you for taking the time to procrastinate with me.
Take another deep breath.
What else do you need to let wait?
