Behind the Ironic Column

As I was busily restacking the unread magazine pile the other day, I realized I was engaging in active procrastination, rather than my usual passive style.  I’m not actually reading the material I have lined up to read, but I’m doing something which is in itself useful — i.e. straightening up the jumble of new mail that’s piled up in the basket waiting for me to notice it.  Most often my procrastination takes the form of just walking by or away from whatever the thing is that I’m trying to avoid.  That’s what I’m referring to as passive procrastination — the task is there to be done but I’m just ignoring it. 

This used to work fairly well with my inbox at work. People would send me documents or journal articles or other forms of paper that stacked up in my inbox.  I could find them easily enough if need be, but mostly there was no reason to — they sat there for a while and then I eventually cleared them out.  Except for the ones that I felt compelled to file away somewhere — but that’s a completely different form of madness.

I work well against a deadline — for instance I get more cleaning and housework done in the week leading up to a trip than I do on any normal basis.  I don’t like to come back to a place that looks bombed out so it’s important to me to straighten up before I go away.  (Why this logic doesn’t apply on a daily basis I don’t know, but it doesn’t)  Anyway, I rush around busily before a trip getting things straightened away.  The only drawback is that if I’m not going on any trips, my household clutter just seems to keep increasing. 

But every so often I can trick myself into an artificial deadline — I have to be at “x” in 30 minutes so I’ll just do what I can do in that limited amount of time.  Not enough time to write an essay but likely enough to do a couple of Twitter entries.  And not enough time to do laundry but enough to put away the dried dishes.  I’m unfailingly surprised at how much I can actually accomplish in those small segments of time.  Of course I’m still not getting to the “bigger” things that are on my list — but this kind of active procrastination at least gets a few things done and leaves me feeling like I’ve accomplished something.

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