Few would call procrastination good–but why does anyone do it? Here’s one way to see it.
Here’s a picture:
There are several piles of dirty laundry over there, a half-finished project under your bed, the plants on your shelves are wilting rapidly, you have an essay due in two days, and that cobweb in the corner is starting to look like some serious spider real estate. You stare at or think about these things every single day, but you never do anything about them. To many people, this is a common occurrence.
The term most people would use for this phenomenon is procrastination. This comes from a Latin word meaning and sounding virtually the same as it does now, “to put off until tomorrow.” Of course, psychologists have gotten to it by this point and come up with plenty of new definitions. I choose not to worry about what the experts say about it. I define procrastination as voluntarily putting off a necessary or beneficial action to the detriment of oneself.
I like to think of myself as a master procrastinator. At the expense of my sanity, health, and sleep quality, I usually wait as long as I think possible before starting or finishing something. More often than not it’s the finishing that I decide to ignore. In my personal experience, the reasoning behind my procrastination tends to be anxiety. I often worry whether whatever I’m doing is good enough. For whom or what I want things to be good, I have absolutely no clue, but I want them to be good. So, I try once, hate it, wait a few days, try again, and so on and so forth. In terms of assignments, I typically realize I need to work on something when it’s around a day before the due date. If whatever I want to do doesn’t have a set due date that will reflect on my precious GPA, I just kind of forget about it. Realistically, many people procrastinate even on enjoyable hobbies of theirs. This is especially common in creative hobbies. Any painter will have an array of half-finished canvases they’ll “get to later,” any musician will have lyrics with no tune yet, and even your grandma has more than likely left a knitting project untouched for weeks or months.
I have an old painting under my bed. I started this painting years ago, when I still did artsy stuff like that. I bought the nicest black paint I could afford, and some handmade Italian paper marbled with ivory, black, and gold. I spent a good hour just laying the black on the canvas so as not to leave streaks or patchy spots, and then another while tearing the paper into the right shapes to paste around the edges of the canvas. I was so proud of what came from my hard work. So proud, in fact, that I doubted whether it was a good idea to paint something in the center like I’d planned. Now, I’ve forgotten whatever plan I had for the thing. When I look at it, it feels like the deep black is staring right back at me into my soul. Sometimes when I think about it gathering dust under my bed, I can imagine— almost feel— the shape of the poor thing. I ponder what could go there but make no motion to recover my old paints.
I think this reflects a lot about the root of procrastination. We set up such a pretty foundation that it pains us to build further on it— God forbid we make it ugly. But without more, beginnings are just that. The start. Pretty, sure, but missing whatever gives it meaning. No subject to be found. And with a lack of motivation to keep trying, whether it be from anxiety, fear, or an attachment to that seemingly perfect beginning, procrastination is born.
People thrive on improvement. Half-finished and half-started projects are an unfortunate byproduct of human experience. No matter how good the beginning is, we’d much rather start from scratch than watch our work decay before our eyes. But procrastinating very quickly makes you doubt your abilities. If you couldn’t get past the beginning without screwing it up, what’s the point in starting again? Procrastination erases that innate desire to improve and replaces it with the desire to perfect. To get past doubt and procrastination, you need to be able to throw everything out the window. You can’t rely on a flashy beginning if it goes nowhere. But you can’t know where it goes unless you try to continue.
“Unfinished Painting” by fabulousfabs is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
The Pine Needle 