Procrastinate? Who? Me?
Who procrastinates? I have NEVER procrastinated—not even in college—because I don’t like the pressure of an approaching deadline squeezing all the blood to my head. And I like my sleep.
My roommate in college almost always waited until the day before a paper was due to start working on it, and she was a “hunt and peck” typist, which took even longer to get the work done. I had always said I’d never lose sleep to help her complete a paper, but one time senior year I took pity on her and stayed up past midnight typing while she dictated. We got so caught up in our typing/dictating roles that she let some Chinese food she was reheating on the stove burn. She pulled it off the stovetop while I grabbed a towel and ran down the hall to hold it over the fire alarm until the smoke sufficiently dissipated; the other students who shared our apartment building would not be amused at being awoken and having to exit to the courtyard that late on a Tuesday night.
Though I don’t like pressure, my first boss on my first job after college thrived on it. On a Wednesday afternoon he’d step into my cubical with a 500-page document and say, “I need 16 copies of this for a meeting Friday morning.”
To complete that task, I needed to complete several steps:
1) make 16 copies of 500 pages
2) find 32 3-ring binders for the 16 copies of the two-volume document
3) print covers for the binders
4) print labels for the separators within the binders
5) find separators and insert the labels
6) collect the 16 copies of the 500 pages from the copy center
7) collate the sections
8) load them into the 32 binders.
Ugh. Not an easy task, and I was quite frazzled while completing it. I took Friday off and told my boss so when I carted the copies into his office on Thursday afternoon. Told him I was taking a personal sanity day. I went shopping.
My point is, why put off something you have to do anyway? Unless, of course, like my former boss, you do your best work when your clock is ticking louder and louder.
This morning I realized I might not be as perfect a nonprocrastinator as I’d previously thought. It’s the phone. I don’t like talking on the phone. I don’t even own a cell phone and never have, and sometimes when I have to make a call, I put it off, dreading the moment I have to punch in the numbers. Actually, number punching is fine, it’s the person on the other end answering that I dread. I like answering machines. I sound like a goof sometimes leaving a message, but at least I have an excuse to sound like a goof as the eventual listener might think, “Wow, what a goof, but I bet she’s nervous talking to a machine.” Right-o, but I’m worse when speaking in person.
Despite my trepidation of speaking on the phone, I need more bookmarks to promote My Lost Summer, and this weekend I got an e-mail from the company I ordered from last year saying that shipping rates are going up for orders placed after May 4. (Postal prices go up in mid May.) So this morning I thought about calling, then I decided to read an article on bacteria and how we humans are becoming less resistant to its ill-effects.
I thought about calling but instead went over to visit with a couple coworkers.
I thought about calling but checked my e-mail. And there was the message I’d received this weekend, the one reminding me to order before postal rates go up. So, almost reluctantly, I called. And it was painless.
I called the 1-800 #, my order was there from last year. I placed the same order for the same number of bookmarks and my same credit card was charged the same amount and I was off the phone in five minutes. Effortless.
The lesson I take from this: it never pays to procrastinate.
My roommate in college almost always waited until the day before a paper was due to start working on it, and she was a “hunt and peck” typist, which took even longer to get the work done. I had always said I’d never lose sleep to help her complete a paper, but one time senior year I took pity on her and stayed up past midnight typing while she dictated. We got so caught up in our typing/dictating roles that she let some Chinese food she was reheating on the stove burn. She pulled it off the stovetop while I grabbed a towel and ran down the hall to hold it over the fire alarm until the smoke sufficiently dissipated; the other students who shared our apartment building would not be amused at being awoken and having to exit to the courtyard that late on a Tuesday night.
Though I don’t like pressure, my first boss on my first job after college thrived on it. On a Wednesday afternoon he’d step into my cubical with a 500-page document and say, “I need 16 copies of this for a meeting Friday morning.”
To complete that task, I needed to complete several steps:
1) make 16 copies of 500 pages
2) find 32 3-ring binders for the 16 copies of the two-volume document
3) print covers for the binders
4) print labels for the separators within the binders
5) find separators and insert the labels
6) collect the 16 copies of the 500 pages from the copy center
7) collate the sections
8) load them into the 32 binders.
Ugh. Not an easy task, and I was quite frazzled while completing it. I took Friday off and told my boss so when I carted the copies into his office on Thursday afternoon. Told him I was taking a personal sanity day. I went shopping.
My point is, why put off something you have to do anyway? Unless, of course, like my former boss, you do your best work when your clock is ticking louder and louder.
This morning I realized I might not be as perfect a nonprocrastinator as I’d previously thought. It’s the phone. I don’t like talking on the phone. I don’t even own a cell phone and never have, and sometimes when I have to make a call, I put it off, dreading the moment I have to punch in the numbers. Actually, number punching is fine, it’s the person on the other end answering that I dread. I like answering machines. I sound like a goof sometimes leaving a message, but at least I have an excuse to sound like a goof as the eventual listener might think, “Wow, what a goof, but I bet she’s nervous talking to a machine.” Right-o, but I’m worse when speaking in person.
Despite my trepidation of speaking on the phone, I need more bookmarks to promote My Lost Summer, and this weekend I got an e-mail from the company I ordered from last year saying that shipping rates are going up for orders placed after May 4. (Postal prices go up in mid May.) So this morning I thought about calling, then I decided to read an article on bacteria and how we humans are becoming less resistant to its ill-effects.
I thought about calling but instead went over to visit with a couple coworkers.
I thought about calling but checked my e-mail. And there was the message I’d received this weekend, the one reminding me to order before postal rates go up. So, almost reluctantly, I called. And it was painless.
I called the 1-800 #, my order was there from last year. I placed the same order for the same number of bookmarks and my same credit card was charged the same amount and I was off the phone in five minutes. Effortless.
The lesson I take from this: it never pays to procrastinate.
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer at 11:10 AM
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