Putting Off is Easy
Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible. ~George Claude Lorimer
I can’t say that I’m familiar with this George Claude character, but I see evidence of the wisdom of his insight on a daily basis. In fact, I’m staring at it right now as it has manifested itself in the form of an endlessly blinking cursor. Incidentally, I’d prefer that you, dear reader, avoid reading too much into the inspiration for this column’s subject material.
Procrastination is one of the more absurd irrationalities to which the human condition is subject. As far as I can tell, it consists of a wager we make with ourselves that dodging potential short-term pain will be well worth the certain long-term agony that will result. Thought of less dryly, we choose to avoid tripping on our front step in order that we may get hit by the dump-truck down the street. We know the dump-truck awaits. We can see it down the street. We just consciously pretend as if it won’t hurt that badly.
The irrationality here is that we know that it will hurt that badly. We acquired this knowledge through experience. We learned when we were kids that if we took five minutes a day to clean our room we would never incur the wrath of our parents. But, what did we (I) do instead? We (I) put the cleaning off until this lack of effort compelled our (my) parents to volcanically insist upon action. By this time, of course, the gods of logic and cursed mathematics had decreed that the chore’s completion would amount to five minutes multiplied by the number of days that the choice to be a loser was made, all of which was to be done consecutively.
I hated it. The predicament was entirely of my own making, yet I was left bitter and angry toward those who sought to correct my error. It is both painful and amusing to watch this same chain of events play out with many of my clients toward the end of every school year. They often look at the stacks of late work they themselves chose to ignore and promptly sneer at the teachers who assigned it and the parents insisting on its completion.
We let ourselves get away with this nonsense; some of us do so well into adulthood because we believe ourselves to be the only victims of our procrastination. On inspection, however, this is flatly untrue in almost all cases. Consider my parents, whose home I neglected and who I drove to the outer reaches of the rage spectrum. Consider the parents who are compelled to spend their time getting their kid to do all that late work and the teacher who is made to wait just to grade it all. Let’s not forget the basket cases we make of ourselves as we struggle to atone for the sin of procrastination. We force the people around us to deal with a stressed out, unhappy version of ourselves rather than the calm and pleasant version who took care of our responsibilities on time.
I don’t claim to be wearing a white hat, here. I am willing to admit that I’m a “procraddict”. I’m also willing to confess to making up silly words. I’m simply saying that the least we can do for those we care about is to recognize and attempt to limit the scope of our shortcomings, especially if those shortcomings are of our own choosing.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, I totally made deadline.
Quinton is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Edmond Family Counseling and can be reached at 405-341-3554.
