I derived a lot of enjoyment from reading an article (available to subscribers only) in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic of procrastination. Misery loves company, I guess, because I felt comforted by the author’s description of his life of always being late with some project or another. My thoughts as I read about his techniques for not getting done what he should have already completed were something like: “Wow, he could be describing me.” I have failed, over and over and over again, to make writing deadlines. And yet I am tempted to say Yes again and again when asked to do this or that writing project. There is some weird psychological explanation here that fails me at the moment. Getting back to the article in The Chronicle, I thought the author summed things up nicely when he wrote:
“The best advice I ever heard is that life is what we do when we are avoiding something else. There are already too many books chasing too few readers, and, perhaps, the best thing for most us to do is take some time to play with our kids, talk to our students and colleagues, cultivate our gardens, and live well.”
Amen.
