But isn’t it ridiculous to hope to have no regrets?
Of course I’ll have regrets. I am a regretting machine. Of course things will be left undone. How could there not be? Do I really believe that if only I am organized and rational enough, it will be possible to die entirely content? I’m never going to out-perfect the perfect or out-divine the divine. I need both the evasions and the clean coherence, the regret as well as the fulfillment.
I’m human; my failings are some of the best things about me.
* * *
Charles Darwin died in 1882, having authored twenty-five volumes. His last was about earthworms. When he wasn’t doing other important things like, say, reshaping the course of intellectual history, Darwin liked to work on worms. He had been thinking about worms for about a half century, since about the time the Beagle returned. As research topics go, worms might seem modest, even humble. But Darwin appreciated worms for the surprising scale of their impact on the world. He respected their talent for soil improvement and recycling and even the preservation of archaeological artifacts. “We ought to be grateful” to worms, he wrote to a friend. Worms expressed one of Darwin’s signature themes: small, incremental activities leading to mighty consequences. Some of Darwin’s worm studies took years. For one project, he set a stone in a field behind his house and measured how deeply it sank over time to get an idea of how much soil earthworms displace. He traveled to Stonehenge—and Darwin was no fan of travel—to see how some of the site’s early monoliths had been buried in worm castings. He got the entire family involved in his worm work, enlisting the kids to play bassoon and piano and to make a racket with whistles as part of an investigation of how earthworms react to music. (They were indifferent to his son’s bassoon playing, but very sensitive to vibrations when placed in a bowl atop a piano.) To read Darwin’s letters about his earthworm research is to get the feeling that he would have been content to spend his life this way—surrounded by the brood, engrossed in tabletop experimentation, puttering in the garden—with or without the great breakthrough for which he is most remembered. The book he finally produced on worms was called The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits. It sold briskly, moving through two printings in a matter of weeks. But how could it not, with a title that sexy?
Darwin, like the earthworms he admired, played a long game. He noticed what others did not—the peculiarities of barnacles, of earthworms—and appreciated what he noticed. These observations accumulated and became something bigger than themselves. We remember Darwin mostly for his big idea, but that big idea would have been impossible without the many smaller observations on which it was built. When the end finally approached, Darwin told an old friend that he had his eye on a resting place in the village churchyard, “the sweetest place on earth.” He would be with the worms there.
* * *
I said good-bye to Rowan Blaik and Down House. I had to get back to London. Dmetir, my Bulgarian Uber driver, was supposed to meet me in Downe village, about a half mile away. If traffic cooperated, I would be back in my London hotel in time for a phone appointment with an editor, and in time to complete the outline that I had been promising, but not delivering, for about a month now.
But on my way into the village, I passed an access to one of the local public right-of-ways. The path cut through a storybook meadow, then bisected a thicket of maple and holly. In the distance were some prosperous-looking cottages and a walled garden. It all looked so inviting. I thought again of what a minor adventure it would be to just start down this path and follow it wherever it led. The early afternoon’s storm had moved off and now late afternoon autumnal sun angled through oak leaves, dust motes floating in gold, and I was feeling all Wordsworthy. When would I ever have this chance again? I could walk a few miles, and see if the countryside proved as inspiring for me as it did for Darwin. I could find a pub in some postcard village. I had consulted a local map and been intrigued by the names of some of the nearby towns: Biggin Hill. Badgers Mount. Pratts Bottom. Was it just me, or was every place name in Kent sexually suggestive?
I decided that the chance to roam the romantic Kentish countryside was too good to miss, deadline or not. I started off down the path. Then I thought again about my editor waiting for my call and about Dmetir, my Bulgarian Uber driver, looking for me in town. I couldn’t just blow them off. So I reversed myself and started walking back down the road to town.
I had walked about a hundred yards when I got to thinking that it would be a shame to give into the soul-killing demands of the marketplace and miss this chance to do something I might well remember for the rest of my life, namely follow that picturesque path as Darwin might well have. My time with the Great Procrastinators had taught me that the ability to think of reasons not to do what we are supposed to do is one of the greatest gifts the mind has to offer. Our evasions, our small delusions and self-deceptions, these are what give life its flavor. They are what help us feel a little less at the mercy of our obligations and the systems of control that impose them. So I turned around yet again and went back down the right of way.
But, it turns out, obligation is a hard thing to shake. As I ambled down the gorgeous path, guilt still nagged. What I needed to do right at this moment, guilt said, was get back to London and do my job. Be an adult, be a professional.
I stopped and tried to reason through the matter. I could go back to town and attend to business, or I could follow the right-of-way and explore. I knew that to follow the right-of-way would mean putting off my business. On the other hand, going back to London would mean putting off the adventure of walking the right-of-way. No matter what I did, I would be putting off something.
I had reasoned myself into one of those corners where I no longer trusted my own rationalizations. It wasn’t even clear to me at this point what was obligation and what was evasion, and so I couldn’t decide what it was I really wanted to do. Not only could I not decide whether I should procrastinate, I was becoming confused about which course of action would constitute procrastination. The only thing that I could definitely say for sure I didn’t want to do was what I was, in fact, doing, which was walking back and forth and getting nowhere.
It was at this point that Dmetir, my Bulgarian Uber driver, pulled up. He had been on his way into the village when he’d spotted me. He honked, pulled over, and rolled down his window. I hustled over to talk to him.
I was reminded then of an idea I’d had earlier in the day. My idea was that some official international body—UNESCO, maybe?—should create a list of World Procrastination Sites, places where great things didn’t happen, at least not right away. Charles Darwin’s Down House would certainly be one. Hamlet’s castle at Elsinore could be another. These would be pilgrimage sites for procrastinators looking for someplace to go where they could do something other than what they were supposed to do. Just like the urge to travel springs from the desire to see what is beyond the bend in the road, procrastination starts with the recognition that there might be something, anything, better to do than what we’re supposed to do. It is comforting to think that there might be something else to do, something better to do, even when we have no idea what it might be. Especially when we have no idea what it might be. What a dream it would be to exist in duplicate, so that at any moment, you could choose to be both diligent and slack, procrastinator and go-getter.
“Are you ready to go back to London?” Dmetir asked me through the open window.
It was a pretty simple question, but I stood there silent for what seemed like a very long time before I finally answered.
Acknowledgments
This procrastinator has already put off for far too long expressing my thanks to the following:
Old friends and continuing inspirations Michael Hainey and Dr. John Duffy; stalwart magazine editor Jim Winters; the brilliant Jennifer Egan; the keen-eyed Michael Siciliano and Ada Brunstein; and Hugh Egan, who pointed me in the right direction.
Joe Ferrari, Tim Pychyl, Laura Rabin, and Mark White, who generously took time to educate me about academic perspectives on procrastination (though any errors are of course my own fault); Rowan Blaik, who showed me around the grounds at Down House; Dale Lyles and the hospitable members of the Lichtenbergian Society; and Father Anthony Rigoli of New Orleans.
Smart and tireless advocates Larry Weissman and Sascha Alper; the expert team at Dey Street Books: Julia Cheiffetz, Heidi Richter, Sean Newcott, and Rita Madrigal; and the Santellas of greater Chicago: Gary, Mary Kay, Glenn, and Gloria.
A special nod to Kerry Temple of Notre Dame Magazine, who first suggested I write about procrastination, and then patiently waited for me to do so.
And one more thank-you, to A-L and Andy, for all the things that matter most.
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Pychyl, Timothy A. Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2010.
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About the Author
ANDREW SANTELLA has written for such publications as GQ, the New York Times Book Review, and Slate. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is likely at this very moment putting off doing something important.
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soon. Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Santella. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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