The Thief of Time

The recent crisis of the euro was exacerbated by the German government's dithering, and the decline of the American industry exemplified by the bankruptcy of GM, was due in part to executives' penchant for delaying decisions. Closer home, I used to coach a client who had a yen for delaying decisions - postponing important decisions on one pretext or another. The perplexing thing about procrastination is that although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy. And that made me wonder what caused people (including me) sit on important - and not so important, decisions.

Until recently that is, when I chanced on this review of the book "The Thief of Time" edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D.White in the New Yorker.

Many explanations have been offered as to why we willingly defer something even though we expect the delay to make us worse off. The one with which most contributors to the book agree is to do with our relationship with time. Procrastinators are able to make rational choices when they are thinking of the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals.

Another is ignorance - a case of "the planning fallacy". Procrastinators fail to take into account the time it has taken them to complete similar projects in the past and partly because they rely on everything going smoothly without any accidents or problems.

Both the above cannot be the whole story and a fuller explanation offered by the essayists is to do with our attitudes. General McClellan, a Union army general during the American Civil War and 'one of the greatest procrastinators of all time(!)", is a perfect example of this. Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck writing about him said, "there is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can conceive of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass." McClellan's "immobility" highlights several classic reasons we procrastinate. The general seemed to have been unsure he could do anything and was always cribbing to Lincoln about the lack of resources - whether troops or arms. Procrastinators, create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that creates a vicious cycle and often succumb to perfectionism.

So how do we overcome ourselves of procrastination? The book suggests the use of External Aids (perhaps a coach who holds you accountable?) and the use of Reframing - dividing projects into smaller, more defined tasks.

Or perhaps you could do a variation on the the even more radical method employed by Victor Hugo. He would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he'd be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing!