Where was I going with this?

OK, so I’m going to admit to you all that I have a terrible failing that I blame solely on everybody but me. I am a blatant procrastinator. Not only do I mindlessly put things off until the last moment, I often do so deliberately. I am, on average, eight minutes late for everything. Even if I’m ready to leave the house half an hour before an event, I won’t actually get into the car until one minute after it has started (whereupon I will drive at the speed of fear, yelling at everyone else for thoughtlessly being on the road at the same moment and then, usually, making obscene gestures at someone who will turn out to be the guest speaker and who has no cause to give me the side-eye because, hello, you’re late, too, thank you very much).

Why do I do this? It’s a sickness caused by, I’m convinced, the Internet, of whom I’m a huge, huge fan.

(10 minutes later)

I’m back. I got distracted. Did you know that the Internet is 50 per cent comprised of cute kitten videos? True story. They’re irresistible and a perfect palate cleanser in a day featuring an overloaded inbox. Also true is that commenters on the Internet are 98 per cent comprised of illiterate, mouth-breathing, bone-gnawing basement dwellers whose last spoken words were probably, “Shut the door, Ma! I need my privacy!”

I digress. But this is what has happened. The Internet has managed to make us a generation of very informed people (cat video commenters aside) that have the attention span of…

(10 minutes later)

Sorry. I went on a hunt on Wikipedia for something smaller than the proverbial gnat and got into a slanging match with a commenter on a news website. Ugh. They’re the worst.

So, right. The point is that I’m easily distracted. But that’s not the only reason for procrastination. I am getting more consistent with making a list every morning of the things I need to get done and, by and large, I hit the mark almost every time. At least 75 per cent of the time. Maybe half.

(Note to self: add habitual liar to list of faults.)

(Note to self: I’ll do it tomorrow.)

(5 minutes later—a marked improvement! I should celebrate this somehow. Be right back.)

(4 hours later)

This is embarrassing.

The thing about being a chronic procrastinator is not that I am necessarily trying to avoid a task. Certainly, there’s an element of that. But even things we love to do get put off. Procrastinators are masters of delayed gratification. We’re masters of delayed punishment. We’re masters of putting off until tomorrow what should have been done sometime last week.

As a writer, I work under a deadline. When I act or direct, all of my energy is created on the final product being ready for opening night. And there’s a weird creative superstition that if your work is ready too soon, it will spoil before the best-before date. So we hold off. We let it hang a while. We let the flavours of the stew we’re cooking really get to know each other before we put it on the table for general consumption, even if the diners are hungry enough that they’ve salt-and-peppered the centrepiece in anticipation. I like to think that the wait is worth it, and if I’m wrong, don’t be in a hurry to say so.

And while we’re waiting for the moment of pure brilliance—which, admittedly, is sometimes not when everyone else expected it would be—that perfect interconnection of all things, the ideal time to finally put on lipstick and head out the door so we can gun it all the way to dinner, we’re busy engaged in other very important tasks. Though, truth be told, 60 per cent of the time, it involves telling the Internet chattering classes what, precisely, is wrong with their brains. It just helps to pass the time we don’t have.

Note: This article was commissioned in 2005

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