13 Comments

I so enjoy slow reading you. While reading, you helped me come to an epiphany about myself that when i procrastinate it's because I'm not prepared, like I haven't fractured the task into steps, thus feel overwhelmed. Also, your post got me thinking about how maybe religion created "procrastination" as a way to shame us into "doing" - "idle hands" and all. Idle hands can lead to too much thinking. Anyway, really love how my mind buzzes away after reading your work.

Expand full comment

"Rather than being the ostensible or ironic ‘guilt’ over a certain bad taste pleasure, it often strikes me as an ironically cloaked actual guilt over feeling pleasure in general."

The only good definition I've heard of guilty pleasure are media that presents views that are fundamentally against your values but you can't help being entertained.

However that one person who told me that had a very clear example and had thought the question through. I think the majority of people fall under your rubric: guilt for feeling pleasure at all.

Expand full comment

“For the artist it might be a sign that you haven’t yet sufficiently thought your idea or your story through enough. It might be a sign that you are afraid of the self-revelation that the work will entail.”

The latter definitely resonated with me. I’ve sometimes wondered if the reason I procrastinate writing is because I truly don’t like it, as suggested in the corporate situation, but every time I do write, it provides me immense satisfaction. The fear of self-revelation is a much better explanation that weirdly reassures me because it is a perfectly normal response to exploring the unknown

As always, this was a provocative essay that could only come from the wisdom associated with deeply contemplating the “why” behind conventional “problems”. Nice job Tom

Expand full comment

I’m convinced at this point that the entire idea of ‘procrastination’ was made up by somebody who had an idea for a self-improvement book.

Procrastination tells us things, deeper than ‘I am lazy’. I think the majority of us—particularly us with office jobs—spend the majority of our lives stuck procrastinating, because most jobs don’t take us 8 hours to perform but we have to stay in the office.

I wonder if the term started to perpetuate more in an industrial world, or the post-industrial world that followed.

“The best way to troll an influencer is to politely but repeatedly inquire as to what they actually do. After all we are what we are, not what we say we are.”

This made me laugh.

Expand full comment
founding

This added some depth to my understanding of procrastination, as I always get unpleasant tasks out of the way quickly, so I never thought of procrastination one way or the other. You wrote that "Those are the two commonalities, as far as I can tell- either more preparation is needed before you begin or more commonly that you are afraid of failure or rejection that may come from completing the task." This led me to consider that fear of failure can be a factor in procrastination. A few things fell into place for me with that astute observation. Well done as usual and thanks.

Expand full comment