New Thoughts on Procrastination

Written by Melissa Corrigan (GPSS Writer) | 03 February 2011
Posted in GPSS Blog - Fictions

It is two days before my daughter’s birthday party.· She turned 7 on Wednesday. To those parenting while going to school I salute you.· To those single parenting while going to school- I stand in solidarity with you.· To all friends, mothers, fathers, sisters, aunts, uncles, brothers, grandparents and cousins who help us out- I thank you. Some how or other it will all get done. Two papers, one meeting with a mentor teacher, house cleaning, cake baking, decorating, and partying with 15 seven year olds.

The above poem is relevant because last week I was living like the Queen of time. I had so much of it I was bored. I’d read all that I felt I needed to read, touched no book for three days, looked at no assignment, and touched no syllabi. Now, 40 hours before the party begins, and 72 hours before the papers are due, I wish I had those three days back. What was I thinking? How could I have let everything go? Who was I kidding when I promised the 1^st grade teacher that I would bake 100 mini cupcakes for the celebration of the 100^th day of instruction that happened to coincide with my daughter’s birthday?

And then…as if all of that weren’t bad enough- someone invited me to join Restaurant City. I am at level 6 after the first week. My ratings are consistently 49.9 out of 50. Not bad for an over achiever. Except that last week's paper was dismal. I’m not at all pleased with it. I didn’t plan well, left it until Sunday, and had high hopes of leaving my daughter with a friend at a party so I could go home and write for the day. The best laid plans had me drive out there around eleven (45 minutes no traffic), drive home (45 minutes) and begin work, just to be called at one thirty because my daughter cut her foot open and she wouldn’t stop crying or bleeding. Drove back (still light traffic), to cuddle, comfort, and assess.· Luckily the cut was on an angle, so even though it was long, it wouldn’t need stitches. It kept bleeding because she kept bumping it. We washed it again, bandaged her up with her foot wrapped in a towel, and headed for home. This time there was traffic. An hour and a half later we arrived back. It was almost six. Most of the day was wasted.

I tried to distract her with TV, but she was hungry, and her foot hurt, and after dinner she wanted to cuddle. ·Big giant drops of tears down her face because it hurt AND mommy didn’t want to pay attention to her. It’s hard to cuddle a six-almost-seven year old while typing. We played Restaurant City- she clicked. We pretended to be tigers. We ate desert. We read books. It’s OK, (I told myself) I can just stay up to finish the paper…

Chrisoula Andreou & Mark White explore procrastination in philosophical essays in their book The Thief of Time (April 14, 2010). One of the themes of the nature of procrastination is that despite being the subject of many jokes, procrastination is extremely painful. Those who partake- actually suffer for it a great deal. They are aware the whole time that they are putting aside something that should indeed be extremely important to them. And in many cases procrastinators do many other things besides the one thing that they should be doing. In my case, it was more important to play Restaurant City with my daughter, than to do school work, because, I rationalized, she’s only this age once. I can finish the paper easily. . . it won’t take that long…but at the same time I knew I was unhappy, and it hurt. It also hurt to turn in a substandard paper. I may squeak by- but that’s not why I enrolled in grad school.

The book does offer some insight into the philosophy of procrastination, and to my mind explores the metacognitive thought processes behind the experience. It is an odd dance to not know what one is up to, but to also know that one is not up to the thing they are supposed to be doing. Who are we but children, escaping the internalized parent? Hence the mirror nature of the poem above, and the understanding that what it is I seek to escape is often the unknown- that which is new. The identity I have forged as a student, a parent, and an employee are functional- until there is something new to be learned, or a structure of thought to incorporate into my schema- my identity. How well I resolve any disequilibrium is part of the learning process. The disequilibrium is not present until I engage my learning and convert it into words. Once I give it structure in the world of words then it settles, but that in-between space before the task becomes autotomized is most excruciating.

There is another way, of course- to focus on the pleasure of the item to be done while distracting oneself for the moment away from the discomfort of the procrastinated task. I don’t want to give away too much of the book, but basically my best tack is to procrastinate my way out of the procrastination. Write a poem that I would never just sit to write- or a blog post that seems to cloud my vision. When I do this I learn something- like a new way of imagining a thesis, and turning it into a romance, a me-tell statement. Both the learning and the accomplishment of a creative task provides relief, a sense of accomplishment and self-efficacy (I can do this). Relief, accomplishment and a belief in my capacity for learning and creativity give me the agency to engage more fully in the new task, and to let go of irrational fears of the unknown. Then it is only natural to do the task that needs to be done.

This article is written by Mellisa Corrigan, a USC graduate student at MAT@USC. You can read more of her work at: www.chemoqueen.com