I attended a meeting this evening where we watched a very interesting TED talk on procrastination. I always thought I was a champion procrastinator but this speaker had taken it to a whole new level.
I won't go into all of his theory on why we procrastinate (including the little monkey in our brain who leads us into time wasting activities) but I did appreciate his explanation of two different types of procrastination. The first is what I was most familiar with from my school years - putting something off until the big scary panic monster scares the monkey away and you finally get something done.
I can well remember some sleepless nights in college and even some in high school which I spent finishing up projects due the next day. I'm currently working on a weaving project that needs to be finished by March. March seems like such a long time from now. Plenty of time to get it done.
The second is the procrastination of something that may never need to be done at all. For example raking leaves. They all blow away, or get covered by snow, or chopped up by the lawn mower eventually.
My greatest excuse for procrastination is that I love to read. I can remember my mother saying to me, when I was about 12 years old, "You can't read your life away."
Well I did get my head out of the books long enough to get married, raise a family, enjoy my grandchildren, get married again, enjoy more grandchildren and all of that is still going on. But guess what Mom? In retirement I do have plenty of time to loose myself in a book without feeling much pressure to get anything else done. Life as a procrastinator is just fine.
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