Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today...

We’ve all heard this and I’m sure many of us have not heeded the advice and found a multitude of reasons why tomorrow might be better – I’ll have more energy after a good night’s sleep, Maybe the light will be better tomorrow, Maybe I won’t have this bone in my leg tomorrow!!!, you know the sort of thing.  It must also lead to lots of marital discourse, when that shelf or picture needs putting up or the lawn needs cutting and excuses such as maybe tomorrow my eye will be straighter or that wisp of cloud way over there on the horizon may be coming this way and what a shame to get everything out, only to have to put it all away again if it rains.  Certainly in my house there are times when ‘er indoors tuts, raises an eyebrow or sighs loudly, before asking out loud to anyone who might be listening, I wonder if this will ever get done.

Well, for years I have known deep down that there was a reason for delaying certain things until tomorrow, the latest being cladding the ceiling in our new mezzanine area, even if at the time the excuses seemed a little flimsy, but now I have had it all explained to me when reading a copy of Good Housekeeping instead of being good at the housekeeping!  It’s all down to a small snippet that suddenly clearly puts down on paper just what I have been trying to say for years.  But as with most things in life there are certain conditions!

John Perry is an American professor of philosophy who explains: “Procrastinators seldom do nothing, they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils” (today I sorted out the offcuts of wood in the workshop and put the tools tidy!).  He advises going along with this, explaining that you are still getting other things done, whilst freeing up your brain to mull over the chore you’ve put off.  The upshot then of this is that said chore, having been mulled over and therefore better planned, is more effectively carried out.

So as long as you potter constructively, your procrastination therefore becomes positive or “structured” as John Perry refers to it and suddenly I find that not only am I positive and structured, or procrastinating positively, as I tell ‘er indoors, but also it has done my self esteem a huge power of good, as I no longer feel guilty when I make sure that the cutlery in the draw is tidily stacked together, the glasses in the cupboard are all in neat rows according to type, my socks and pants are neatly folded and colour coded or my toothpaste tube is carefully rolled up and squeezed from the end, it will all mean that important job tomorrow will go that much more smoothly and be finished just that bit quicker, albeit a day or two later and all those other things will have been done into the bargain!!  

On the other hand, some of those things might just be put down to my “autistic” tendencies, but that’s to discuss another day, once I’ve raked the gravel outside into neat lines!!!     

I know it’s only just gone 1^st April, and maybe you think I’m making it all up, well if you’re one of these Doubting Thomases’s, then check out the link below:

 http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/