Are there Benefits to Procrastinating?

conditioned you to become a procrastinator. Yeah, So when I was a kid, for like book reports or dioramas or whatever, like,

it was always the same. I I just wait till the last minute, and then my parents would stay up with me, and since I was up, they'd make or order pizza, and then it'd be like nine or nine thirty and like Mystery was on PBS, so we'd stay up to watch the Sherlock Holmes with my mom, and uh, you know, since I was up, they'd also like open a box of ice cream and we eat that together.

And then in the morning, like my little sister would wake up and see a pizza box and an ice cream carton and be like, you had another party without me. That's great. So I mean, I both hate that I'm a procrastinator and I really love staying up late and sort of that thrill of rushing to a deadline. And Metal Foss used to feel like that to me. We'd rushed to close an issue of the magazine and it was just so fun. But I'm curious about procrastination, like

what makes us do it? Why do we brag about it? And who are the greatest procrastinators in history? And that's what we're gonna find out today. Let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Manguesh Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass with a bottle of noos, a stack of bullet journals. What is that a pot Medoro timer and a pair of blinders. I mean, this guy is so serious about never losing

his focus. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I know Tristan loves to hit deadlines. He is ruthless about not procrastinating. But you know, speaking of procrastination, we've got Andrew Santela on the program. Now. Andrews, the author of a wonderful new book. It's called Soon, An Overdue History of Procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to you and me. Welcome to part time genius Andrew, Well, thank you. Thanks

for having me. All right, so let's get right to it that you you've said you wrote this book on procrastination not to end your habit, but actually to excuse it, which is pretty wonderful. So can you tell us a little bit about how you decided to write this book and where the idea came about. Yeah, I was motivated

almost entirely by self interest. Um, you know, I knew I had this lifelong procrastination habit, and I thought if I dove deepen up into the history of the thing, I might find some you know, little cur all of information that would justify my habit, that would excuse it and uh make me feel a little less bad about it. So I I think you reade that of us are chronic procrastinators. And uh, I think it's like a third

of college students identify as procrastinators. And I was curious, why do you think it is that people just love to brag about being procrastinators? That is one of the most fascinating phenomenon connected to procrastination. If you ask me, um, when I would tell people I was working on a book about procrastination, almost always the response would be, oh, that's the book for me. I'm the world's worst procrastinator or I'm a terrible procrastinator. I've got to read that book.

And I was noticing, like all the language was very judgmental, terrible and the worst, all those sorts of uh characterizations. So people were clearly ashamed about their habit, but they're also bragging to me about there there was this weird sort of perverse pride in there in there in their terrible habits. And I recognize that in myself. M I think even people who aren't such bad procrastinators, I want

to call themselves really bad procrastinators. And and I think we've been really conditioned to to feel bad every time we aren't at our most efficient. It's a it's a strange thing. Yeah, it's definitely a strange thing. And so so we should definitely get to the cure here, though, So can you talk to us about Saint Expedite So the quick lives of the Saints version is that he was supposed to have been a Roman centurion in the fourth century who was not a man of faith, but

one day decided to accept the Christian faith. But he was visited, and this is the really good part here. He was visited by a talking crow. And I know we've all been there, the talk and crows that they have, you know, Expedite, just why don't want to hold on a second? Uh? The rush? Why don't you think about it before you dive into this and make sure you're

doing the right thing. You can always do it tomorrow, um, and Expedite, tempted as he was by the by the opportunity to put off his conversion, decided that no, this was the devil talking through the crow, and he actually killed the crow. He stomped the crow to death. According the legend, when you see a statute of Saint Expedite, now he's almost always shown in his Roman centary on outfit stepping on a crow, and you know at his feet there's a dead there's a dead crow breathing his

last and I know it's gruesome. Expedite a banner that says hoodier, which is the Latin word for today. So he is this the emblem of promptness in certitude. The real interesting thing about that story though, for me, is that it is just a story. It's almost university agreed that, you know, he's a legend. His story might be based on many characters or something like that, but there was

no historical saint Expedite. And that's really to me because it's like only only a only a fictional character could be that prompt and that for the rest of us, the rest of us, actual human beings, you know, we have to wrestle with our with our procrastination. Yeah, I mean saying Expedite sounds fictional, but that talking crow of it really sold me on the ship. You think, like, with a detail like that, it's got to be true, definitely. But well, what one of the things that was scurious

about is how he's worshiped on Reunion Island. But would you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, So, in various places around the world there's you know, a pretty flourishing sort of devotional cult that you know, still Um you know sees Expedite and other saints as sort of mediators. When people need help, they will you know, ask to intercede on their behalf. Um. In Brazil, the feast day of set Expedite, which is coming up. I think it's April nineteenth, remember, and right, the feast day of St.

Expedite is really a big deal. I mean a lot of the of the churches are filled with people, and um, this Reunion Island is is another place where where that devotion exists. People that build roadside shrines to expedite the little necessary prayers for him, asking for his help with certain problems. And uh, if they get his help and they get help with the problem, they leave him some uh you know, some some some treat and if they don't, they're supposed to lop off the head of the statue.

And which explains why there's a lot of headless expedite statues that so much in the United States, there's pretty much the only place where that sort of devotion is still practices in the area around New Orleans. There's a church, Our Lady of Gladaloupe Church just outside, yeah, the French Quarter on Rampart Street, where there's a statusy and expedite.

And I went to visit and I saw from my from my own eye is h little bits of paper left at the foot of his statue intercessory prayers that people have scribbled out asking for his help with this or with that. Uh. And the local tradition is that you're supposed to leave a piece of pound cake for expedite as as a sort of token of your good, good good faith. Um, and I didn't. When the day

I visited, I didn't see any pound cake. And the church was kind of dark and deserted, and it was a little spooky in there, and I was thinking, Jesus, that did he actually consume the pound cakes? There was no pound cake because father Tony, who's the parish priest, regularly cleans up and you know, collects the pound cake and puts it to good use. So that was there was there was a non supernatural explanation for that. I like,

puts it to good use. I mean, pound cake is pretty delicious, so I have a feeling I know what Father Tony are doing with the pound cat had one more question about that, though, you you made more than one trip to saying expedite, right, it wasn't just the first trip. I'm not I'm I'm a little ashamed of that, but it's true. I went down with a friend who knew that if he didn't accompany me, I would never

get down to New Orleans. I mean I I told him, I I should really get down to New Orleans for this book I'm writing, and there's there's something down there. I should see it and make a really great chapter. And you know, he knows me well enough, he's an old friend. He knows me well enough that that he knew I would down there and left to my own devices.

So he insisted that we go together, and he had on the plane with me, and we went down to New Orleans and spent I think two days down there, and I did not a single bit of research and saying it, but I durned the two days I was in New Orleans. I didn't any uh, you know, I just there was a lot of other things to do in New Orleans. It's a very it's a very fun city. So I had to go back a second time. I was really shamed myself that I had to go back

a second time, this time by myself. And I actually did talk to Father Tony and some other people about extra tonight. All right, let's move from talking about somebody who was legendary to some very real people in history, some famous procrastinators. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. Were joined by Anderson tell of the author of the book Soon and Overdue History of Procrastination, From Leonardo and

Darwin to you and me. Why don't we move from someone who may have been legend to some some true famous procrastinators. So can we talk a little bit about Charles Darwin? First? Darwin is probably the favorite of all the sort of historical figures that I encountered in working

on the book. I really came to be a bond of him, you know, I mean, I always knew what an important figure he wasn't what a genius he was, but he also is just seems to have a really devoted family guy and sort of an odd bird and in a really charming way. The fact is, it took him more than two decades from the time when he sort of developed the germ of idea that is at the heart of natural selection and wrote up sort of

that foundational idea in his private notebooks. It took him more than two decades from that point to the point where he actually published the landmark book on the Origin of species. And you know, I understand that science takes time. The fact is, during those two and a half decades, he did a lot of things that in retrospect seemed like maybe not great uses of his time. Um. And I think I think he did those things well. Like, for example, he had edited gardening magazine. He did voluminous

research on earthworms. He did he became obsessed with barnacles. He had barnacles all over his house. Um, and you know, pickled in jars, and he was dissecting them and examining them and comparing different categories and parnacles. He was just he, by his own admission, obsessed with things, to the point where his kids grew up thinking like everyone lived like

this with barnacles all over the house. When one of Darwin's boys went to visit a friend at a friend's house, he looked around and said, well, where does your father do his barnacles? He thought everyone had had you had a study full of particles. So you know, you wonder why was he not just plugging away on this book that he must have known would shake the world to its core, um, and instead was spending his time with worms. Um. You know, and I think he was ambivalent about the

work he was doing in some ways. You know, he was the product of a very devout father who wanted him to go into the ministry, and you know, I think that background made him, especially you leery of undertaking this work that he knew would displace God in the world view of many um and so I think there are a lot of reasons why he was ambivalent about his work, and so I think that resulted in these detours that seemed odd to us, and even even for Darwin.

He he admitted, I think I might have spentled m might have spent a little bit too long on those particles that but I think one of the things that's really interesting, though, is that he learned things from those detours that ended up informing his work on natural selection. Natural selection is all about small incremental changes that lead to large consequences, and earth worms really demonstrate that, and Darwin recognized that what he learned from the Barnacles informed

his work on natural selection. And so I think his story is illustrative of how even the detours sometimes can lead us to some important understanding. And I think that's one of the interesting things about procrastination two, is that there's a lot of there's a lot of ways to

get to understanding. Well, I think one of the other things that's interesting to me is that, and you point this out, is that there's so many ways to procrastinate, right like, from like obsessing over little things that aren't important, to like doing important things but you know, things that aren't important right now, like and in analyzing procrastinating, like, did you find that you're more prone to any one type or or that people tend to gravitate to one type?

You know, I recognize and every you know, people who study this phenomenon um sort of for a living, you know, recognize that you could be really diligent certain things in your life about the housework or paying bills, um, and but a complete procrastinating slacker about other parts of you like maybe your your work deadlines or something like that, or or it could be in reverse. But so yes, there's I think, um, most of us have areas where we're diligent and one thing and and and not so

in another. And I mean that just goes to illustrate how, you know, we're all divided selves and we all have these you know, parts of ourselves that that are sort of at war with each other. And I think all what happens when we're trying to resolve those wars is procrastination, you know. I think it's interesting that you note that Aristotle and Socrates had different philosophies on procrastination. And this idea of there's a word you have in the book.

I wasn't familiar with it. Is it a crazy? How do you pronounce the word? Yeah? I think that's right acre maybe yeah, yeah, So you talk about this idea of a crazia, So can can you talk a little bit about this? So, yes, you're asking me to unpack ancient Greek philosophy. Is that is that if you don't mind, like let's say, let's say we give you, you know, five minutes to unpack the whole thing. I feel like

that's reasonable. Uh. Yeah. So the question about a crazia is whether a rational person can knowingly do something that's bad for again for her. I mean, I don't think the ancient Greeks would have said or her, but I'll add that. Um So, in other words, if you're rational, why would you do something that you know is going to come back to bite you and later, like, for example, procrastinating,

I mean, that's the definition of procrastination. Is to put off something that he used to be done, knowing that the delay will harm you at some will cost you at some point in the future. So if you're a rational person, why would you knowingly, UM, do something that will cost you in the future. Um. And if you're not rational, well then you're not um, you're not capable of knowing that. So so you know, I guess that's the debate. All right, we need to take one more

quick break. But when we come back, I want to talk about to do lists. Welcome back to part time Genius. So I want to ask a couple of questions about to do list. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely a to do list maker. I love keeping lists around, and it's something that you know, we we seem to live in a society that's upset us with these to do list And it was funny you actually included Johnny Cash in the mix here. So can you talk a

little bit about to do list and your philosophy around them. Yeah. My philosophy of to do lists is that they're a great way to avoid actually doing the things on the list. That sounds about right. I spent so much time actually making the list that I find that you know, and and and I get such satisfaction from making the list, but I don't really feel like I need to do the things on the list. The other thing that happens is like I lose my list quite a lot um,

you know. I make so many lists over the course of the day, you know, I leave them all over the place, and I'll lose them, and it's it's funny. They turn up maybe like a month later, you know, and they're still perfectly good because I haven't done any so it's there's still there's still valid and valuable. I think was our a dubious value to like actually getting things done, although actually getting things done was is not really the topic of interest for me in the book.

It's not a how to book or a or a self help book. But trying to understand why we make lists was of interest to me, and I came across really interesting stuff from the novelists and ceotation u Umberto Echo, who wrote at length about lists, and he theorized that we make lists because we're afraid to die. Lists are sort of a gesture at infinitude that you can never complete a list. There's always more to be added to a list and and um as as a as as

an emblem of infinitude. Um they remind us of our by nitness and our and our mortality, and so we make lists. Echo said, because we're afraid to die. I totally buy into that idea, I think. I think so I'm basically I feel like anything I do I do because I'm afraid to die. Well, I I do like to that. I think you mentioned that a lot of people put things and I do this, like I'll put

things on a list just to knock it off. And I think I think there's some link between that and my being a procrastinator, where I think I take a certain amount of pride in being able to hit the deadline even though I wait such a long time. Like I think that feeling of accomplishment from both things like

somehow ties together. But you talk about Frank flood right and how he came up with the idea of falling water in just two hours, and I really love that story, I think as a procrastinator, so I was wondering if

you could share that with us. I think a great way to get that Felium standard for actually knocking something up the list is to write the the most the most ridiculous things, in the most simplest things down as things to do that day, Like, for example, getting up and going to the bathroom would be something to put at the top of your list and it'd be done, you know, spread across it off and you've gotten one of the things off your list. That's all right, I know,

I said. It wasn't a sub help, but that's my one pro go to the bathroom and and it down. Asked about point BOYD Right? Um So, frankly Right was asked to design a house outside Pittsburgh by one of his clients, and the house became what we know of falling Water was one of the great accomplishments of residential architecture. And um and and this, this commission came at a time when rights reputation was sort of in tatters. He

was on the outside. This new wave of European Modernists were the end thing, and he was definitely a sort of a has been. And um this commission at the potential to resurrect his career, and of course Right did the only thing that a procrastinator could do. Given the chance to make such a splash, He put it off he just he han't gotten the commission put nothing down on paper for the longest time. And it was only when his client called and said, Hey, I'm gonna come

by the studio tomorrow. I'd love to see those drawings he'd been working on that right, actually started working on those drawings he was supposed to be working on um And so this a legend sprung up partly, uh you know, disseminated by his students and his sort of his disciples, that that he scribbled out this designs for this master work, you know, at the very last minute, like as his client was waiting in the waiting room, he was finishing these these designs for falling water. And I mean it

really could not have happened that way. His scholars degree. I mean, he must have had the ideas in his head or in some sort of you know, partially finished uh state, and then translated them to paper, you know, when he needed to. But it's interesting to me that his his students wanted to promote this legend of him procrastinating and and not being diligent, because you wouldn't think that would be something to be proud of. You wouldn't

think that would add to your professional reputation. But in his student's mind, it was sort of a ah, proof of what a genius he was that he could I'm almost on demand just about the you know, ideas that would shape architecture to its core. And um, you know, I think so that's his His stories is a lesson and how we sometimes attribute genius to or connect procrastination the genius in a sort of not entirely valid way. So, Andrew,

I really love this book. But one of the things I noticed, and this isn't a chritsm view, but you know, it doesn't seem like there are a lot of historical examples of women procrastinating. And I was curious, why do you think that is? Yeah, and I would recognize that as I was writing, And I mean, part of the problem is that, you know, women just aren't as well represented in our understanding of history as they might be. Our idea of history is, at least in the Western world,

is sort of monotone and short answers. I don't know, Um I did. I did write about Penelope and how I think Penelope was an example of a really strategic procrastinator, someone who used procrastination to um achieve what she wanted to achieve. That is, she wanted to remain faithful to her husband. UM. You know, the story behind Penelope is that she uh told the suitors who wanted to marry her um that she would consider them only when she finished uh making this shroud for her father in law.

Her husband had been offered I don't know how long, twenty years and and people assumed that he was dead, but she believed that she that he would eventually return to her, and so she didn't want to you didn't want to deal with these suitors who wanted to take her husband's place. And so every every day she would work on this shroud that she was supposed to be weaving, and every night she would unraveled the work on the previous day, which I think is a lot of what

procrastinators do, sort of metaphorically with our own work. And so her unraveling, her postponing, and her you know, delay that she employed allowed her to hide time for her husband to return. All right, So Andrew, want one more question before we let you go. You talk a little bit in the book about procrastination societies, which I have

to be honest, it sounds kind of fun. So Can you talk a little bit about this, Yes, I mean, I think procrastination is so widespread and people feel so bad about it that it's only natural that they pan together as procrastinators. Um. It's also forming a procrastination society seems to be a great occasion for making lame jokes about procrastination, so that, um, you know, if you if you started a procrastination in society, you know, the founding date might be at some point in the future, or

the first meeting will be you know, postponed. That you know, you just went across those sorts of lame jokes all the time I ran across. Uh. Well, my we talked about Lichtenburg earlier, the German Enlightenment scientists. Discovering his story led me to a group of people in a small town outside Atlanta, Georgia who founded a society called the Liechtenburgian Society that um honors Lichtenberg and his role in

promoting procrastination. They're all sort of creative, smart people that the teachers and play rights and architects, and I think there was a professional clown in there too, uh and uh. And they're all the inveterate procrastinators who are both like so many of us, a shame of their habit and proud their head of it. And so they formed in

this group. And I went down and uh and sat in on one of their meetings, which happened in the really charming backyard of one of the members house was next to the labyrinth that he built in his backyard. He built the labyrinth one summer when he was supposed to be composing an opera. Uh, and he got like nothing done on the opera. He built was really cool labyrinth and it's a great place to have a have a cocktail and on a nice spring night, like like

we did that night. So that Lichtenburgie in society. If you're looking for a group to join, boy, that's it. I would I recommend that highly. We've been talking with Andrew Santella. The book is soon an overdue history of procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to you and me. Thanks so much for being here, Andrew, my pleasure had a

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