H/T to MS for recommending this entertaining 30-minute BBC 4 program with Rowan Pelling: “Helping Hamlet – Can Science Cure Procrastination” (Note: this may no longer be available by the time of reading).
Procrastination, the show argues, appears to be one of humanity’s greatest and oldest plagues. In Works and Days, Hesiod exhorts us:
Do not put off until tomorrow and the day after.
A man does not fill his barn by shirking his labors
or putting them off; it is keeping at it that gets the work done.
The putter-off of work is the man who wrestles with disaster.
(ll. 410-413; 1959, 67)
This reminds me of something contrarian I once heard from a Moroccan friend, AKA, who told me a phrase in French, which now escapes me in its original, but which roughly captures the following absurdist but oddly appealing procrastinating position: “If you can’t do something tomorrow, there’s no point in starting it today.”
Somewhat related, my friend IA once told me, only half in jest, “You know, I think in Arabic we have a similar word like the expression mañana in Spanish. It’s just that our word in Arabic doesn’t carry the same sense of urgency.”
Below are a few interesting quotes and references from the BBC show:
- Root of procrastination: Akrasia (/əˈkreɪzɪə/; ancient Greek ἀκρασία, “lacking command (over oneself), not properly balanced”), occasionally transliterated as acrasia, is the state of acting against one’s better judgement.
- “As a procrastinator, what you are actually doing is attacking a future version of you.” (after Aristotle)
- “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.” (Douglas Adams)
- “Writers and procrastination are an odd mix. You never here somebody say, “I have plumber’s block. I got to go for a walk in the woods before I can do you a u-bend.”
- Books mentioned:
- Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, Joseph R. Ferrari
- Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, Frank Partnoy