Sarah Gibbard Cook
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Procrastination

6/26/2023

8 Comments

 
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​Last week temperatures rose to the nineties. Wildfire smoke from northern Quebec made outdoor air unsafe to breathe. My car was in the shop. Our phones were on the fritz. It would be a good week to stay in and clean. Not that I wanted to. Housework wasn’t mandatory, but it beat composing a sensitive email that would be difficult to write. I cleared out a filing cabinet of obsolete papers and made a start on sweeping the garage.

I’m puzzled when people list procrastination among their character defects. So long as a paper or project is finished by its due date, who cares whether it was completed at the last minute or well in advance? True, some obligations feel increasingly heavy the longer I delay. On the other hand, a few grow clearer or melt away of their own accord. Too bad I can’t tell in advance which is which.
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Perhaps the best thing about putting off the dreaded email was that it motivated me to other useful tasks for the purpose of avoidance. I wrote a few years ago about Stanford philosopher John Perry’s procrastination strategy. The top-priority activity will get done when it must, and meanwhile several lower-priority jobs get done that would never have happened otherwise.
8 Comments
Kari
6/26/2023 08:16:44 pm

Yes I appreciate that perspective. The plants get watered, clothes and dishes are washed, the steps are swept. Much more satisfying than dealing with paperwork of any kind…

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Sarah Cook link
6/27/2023 11:19:40 am

Absolutely! And all those clean dishes etc. bring so much more instant gratification.

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Rebecca Cuningham link
6/26/2023 08:49:09 pm

I'm with you Sarah. Sounds like a productive week to me. I tend to chew on difficult writing tasks as I clean. I compose in my head and out loud while weeding or sweeping, for example. Gets done! Two birds!

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Mary Wagner
6/27/2023 10:54:16 am

I hate housework!!!!! But I love dithering, The challenge is to see the two as the same thing.

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Sarah Cook link
6/27/2023 11:23:17 am

Thanks for the reminder! I do chew on potential blog posts in my head while escaping into the lower-priority tasks. But alas, it's more the fun creative tasks I chew on than the duty ones.

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Sarah Cook link
6/27/2023 11:27:43 am

Good point. These days I don't dislike housework as much as a few years ago, so long as I get to choose what, where, and when. I recall bemoaning in times past that my life was mostly dishes and laundry. Nowadays I tend to welcome days when I can accomplish without having to think.

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Rick Santovec
7/1/2023 03:08:30 pm

Procrastinating on one’s own is one thing. I happily do it all the time. But Heaven help the Procrastinator if they are working along side a NON-Procrastinator on a team project.

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Sarah Cook link
7/2/2023 07:09:26 am

Procrastinating may work especially well for artists, writers, and others whose minds are always chewing on creative possibilities, even if subconsciously. Nice observation about teamwork. I wonder if there's a strategy to divvy up parts of the project to fit individuals' personal styles.

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    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 


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