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Procrastination: Not To Worry, I Still Have Six Days

Each of the seven deadly vices, Pride, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Lust, Envy and Gluttony, has had defenders. Wrath, or Rage is very chic. Even Sloth can get a pass if you rename it Spiritual Deadness. Add a good café and some Gauloises and you have modern continental philosophy.

Notice too, that five of these basic no-doubt-about-it sins have simple, one-syllable names. Even Gluttony resolves in pronunciation to Glutt’ny. By the way, “Gluttony” is a marvelous word: it sounds as if you were scarfing hamburgers.

Then there is Procrastination.

Five syllables. Latinate, as are the names for many distasteful habits.

Pro-crast-in-A-tion with a lift on the penultimate and a dying “shun.”  A word worthy of Nabokov.

Procrastination gets no respect at all.  Procrastination endures more social contempt, more finger pointing and knowing smiles than Willy the village drunk.

Social scientists look at Procrastination and go hmmm and calculate its drag on Efficiency and the process of Making Money. Helpful people write books telling us how to cure the disgusting habit. It is patent that Procrastination is not approved of by the Best and the Brightest, by anyone who counts.

So let us glance at this unedifying . . . not really a sin (“sin” is so 1290’s) this unhelpful social habit, one with which the writer admits to being bitterly familiar.

But it is difficult to define Procrastination because what we have here is mostly negation, though examples are easy enough to find:

the letter on your desk that you should have opened four weeks ago;

the letter to your cousin you should have written four months ago;

the income tax form (it is mid-March); (no, actually it is late March)

the essay whose deadline approaches like Edward Gorey’s Wuggly-ump

the medical appointment you haven’t scheduled . . .

And so on.

Now this does not appear to be simple laziness, and the writer can speak here from experience. In fact, a marked characteristic of Procrastination is keeping busy, often very busy, with things other than that which you ought to be doing (or your boss thinks you ought to be doing). A procrastinator throws other jobs, whether it is reordering the inventory files, painting the garage or learning Egyptian, between himself and The Avoided as a man rolls a table ahead of him in a brawl in a western saloon.

Still less is it Sloth, aka Acedia or, in France, Ennui. Acedia is a bad, bad condition, much worse than that thing we do. Sloth is an ethical pointlessness, a failure to recognize the good of creation. The procrastinator recognizes all sorts of good. He may even, often does, admit the good of the duty before him. It would be a fine thing to complete that report. Just . . . fine. It’s just that it’s not quite good enough to be doing now.

May we suggest, and we’ve been there big-time, that what is working in this case is dread – not just fear but fear of an evil poorly understood and difficult to escape.

We procrastinate when what is ahead of us is not just a task, but a task that carries with it with a possibility of trouble.  No one, or few people, procrastinate in washing the dishes or buying groceries. But an unopened letter may contain bad news, a letter may remain unwritten because its execution may fail, or it may open a channel to someone with whom you really, really don’t want to deal. Do the income tax, and who knows what the final figure may be, and what the necessary consequences may be? The essay may be beyond your skill, or may not please; the medical check-up…well, the last time, you had to stop smoking.

Looked at this way, Procrastination seems not so absurd.  Is it not common sense to evade an evil?  There is the hurt from which we fly and the corresponding good is escape.

In fact, Procrastination often presents itself as prudence. If you don’t understand the problem, tackle one you can deal with. If you are unsure of your ground, put off launching an attack. Elizabeth I procrastinated like Billy-o. Sometime the mind says, yes, not…yet.  Now, waiting for the right psychic moment may be intuition, but it is not to be sneezed at. As one of America’s Presidents remarked, of ten wagons rolling down hill the wheels will fall off nine before they reach you.

We procrastinate, therefore, out of the expectation of evil, and the good we achieve is the simple negative of not meeting the evil. We buy time, or we think we do. But as with all bad habits, the ticket comes high.

Often, in practical terms, the price is usually paid by other people, who are inconvenienced by having to wait for action on our part. They would be happier if those forms would come in promptly. Whether they have a right to the material before the last moment is an issue of justice. It is important to remember, however, that acts of injustice firstly injure ourselves.

Meanwhile, we, the united procrastinators of the world, pay with the stress and worry that comes from knowing that the problem, no matter what it is, is still out there, and waiting for us, like the bully down the block.

Procrastination, unhappily, is not just delay; it is undue delay. No one says that Fabius Maximus, while he avoided pitched battle with Dread General Hannibal, was procrastinating. Procrastination is unreasonable and culpable.

And this suggests that it is a symptom, not a cause, like the election of a boor (we are writing from Toronto).

What we have here is a failure to connect. It is a misfire of will.

We recognize good, that is, we recognize that our duty is a good, but somehow reason either doesn’t get the memo to will, or the will is not inclined to listen. Duty is good, but it is a long way off, and checking Instapundit is a good and it is right here, right now. Virtus ordo amorum, says the saint, and ordo is not working.

It is a puzzlement. What are we to do?

There are many sources of practical advice, most coming down to “make a list, and follow it.” It sometimes works, for a while. Many of us surrender and let the terror of the deadline impel us. This often works. Fear is not supposed to be a motive among the quality, but we comfort ourselves by remembering that Samuel Johnson worked along these lines.

The only general and lasting solution that comes to mind is to get those amores back in line.  And we can’t think of anything that will do that short of some sort of governing apprehension of good, some central vision, some overwhelming I-want-it to rule all the rest. What, when and where that happens, it is difficult to say.

In the meantime, Procrastination is a possibility built into our condition, like myopia, slicing a shot, or the capability of losing our temper.  If we cannot eliminate it, we may be able to bring it down a bit.

Let’s make a note to look into it.

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Max Arnott is an independent scholar living in Toronto and has been a reader of Voegelin for many years.

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