I would love to see statistics on what percentage of people identify as procrastinators, those lovable people who put off until tomorrow what they don’t want to tackle today.
I suppose I could look it up online, if I ever got around to it. I’m pretty sure there are one or two others out there, but for now, I can only speak for myself. I am a procrastinator.
My day begins with procrastination. Even if I’m not asleep, I stay in bed until the last possible moment, or even a minute or two past that. Then everything I need to do to get out the door is calibrated to the minute. Any little slip-up and the house of cards collapses. A spilled glass of orange juice, a forgotten permission slip, or two feet of snow, and I’m late to work.
There are some things you shouldn’t procrastinate on:
• Buying a Christmas tree. I remember that one year when I was a kid in Florida when we set out to purchase our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. All the trees were sold. Seriously, there was not a single Christmas tree in the entire city of St. Petersburg except for one lone specimen at Sears, of all places. My dad paid way more than he had planned, and we managed to get the tree up and decorated before Santa arrived. At least we procrastinated on taking it down, so we got to enjoy it until Valentine’s Day.
• Finishing the prom dress. As everyone who sews knows, sewing projects are rarely finished on time. But some deadlines are for real. If the prom dress isn’t done by prom night, it’s worthless. There’s no do-over for senior prom. There might be statistics on what percentage of prom dresses are held together by safety pins, if only I could find the time to look them up.
• Taking out the trash. After waiting an entire week to get rid of that smelly turkey carcass, you definitely don’t want to procrastinate on taking out the trash. It’s not a great feeling to be running after the garbage truck, trundling an overstuffed bin behind you, calling out, “Wait for me!” How do I know this? Experience.
Procrastinators practice their art in order to avoid something that they don’t want to deal with. In most cases, the undesirable thing does not go away, and procrastinating only makes it worse. But some things actually benefit from procrastinating:
• Agreeing to do something you don’t want to do. If you get a group email asking for volunteers, and you simply ignore it until later in the day, someone else usually steps up and volunteers before you ever get around to addressing the issue. If you make it a regular practice to check your email once a day in the evening, you can usually avoid those kinds of volunteering opportunities altogether while still remaining guilt free. “Oh, I didn’t find out about it until so-and-so had already said yes. Bummer.”
• Going to the movies. Maybe all your friends are flocking to opening night of the latest blockbuster movie, standing in line for hours in the freezing cold to cram into a crowded theater in order to see it first. But you didn’t get around to clearing your schedule and arranging for a babysitter until the following weekend, at which point you can walk right in, have your pick of seats and still see the very same movie. Voilà — your procrastination paid off!
So, what is the opposite of procrastination, I wonder? Did you ever notice that there’s no one word to describe a person who always gets things done in a timely fashion? I finally got around to checking on Thesaurus.com. The website lists a number of cool synonyms for procrastinator, such as “laggard,” “slowpoke,” and “dilly-dallier.” But there’s no antonym for procrastinator. Those punctual people never get any recognition. I’ve known one or two of them in my time: the college student who always got her papers done days in advance so she could relax and watch TV while the rest of us pulled all-nighters, or the forward thinker who would purchase Christmas gifts throughout the year so as to avoid the last-minute holiday rush. Where’s the fun in that? You don’t even get a cool Latin name to describe yourself.
So I will remain a procrastinator. Feel free to call me a dilly-dallier. If you’re waiting for me to do something, check back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get around to it by then.
• Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother and aspiring author who lives in Juneau. She likes to look at the bright side of life.
