on procrastination.
I signed my daughter and I up for quip toothbrushes years ago. I rely on timers to help me with any and all tasks; having one built into my toothbrush only made sense. Getting one for my daughter felt responsible. And gave her autonomy. Win win.
Every 3 months, quip sends us new brush heads. They make it so easy.
Except it’s not for me.
One doesn’t just take a brush head off and plug a new one it. It turns out it’s a many layered process. Simple steps. But ones I don’t take every day, so, ones that get brushed aside (pun intended).
You first detach the old brush head then use it to scrub the handle clean - which gets really gunky and funky. Then, you clean the holder – a holder that adheres to your mirror. Using a dime, you unscrew the bottom of the holder and clean the junk that accumulated there. (Grossed out yet?) Then you replace the battery. We use rechargeables. I know exactly where they are… but it requires me to go get them plus charge the batteries that have been in the brushes for the past 3 months --
The takeaway is that there is nothing hard happening here. And yet - I can’t get myself to do it. Once, a couple brush heads stayed in their packaging (all recyclable!) until another set arrived. Three months later.
Today, I ripped open the packaging and dug in. Got to work on all the tiny, gross steps. I asked my daughter to find her coin purse and let me borrow a dime —
— and in that moment I discovered one of the reasons I put off the task.
Time and again. I don’t have dimes lying around. (Who does, may I ask?) Did I avoid refilling brush heads all these years because I subconsciously knew that the process would halt when it came to finding a dime?!
My daughter told me I could keep the dime - so generous! - and I found a spot for it in my bathroom drawer.
I’ll never be dime less again.
The toothbrushes were upgraded five days after receiving them. New record.
I felt like I deserved a reward.
Procrastination has been a lifelong battle. I can often mask it by finding ways to keep incredibly busy, but in so doing, my issues with prioritization reveal themselves.
Busy is not productive.
Where do I procrastinate the most? The adult, not fun, responsible acts. Opening a bank account; fixing the debit card PIN number on said bank account (to date, that item has been on my list of To Do’s five months and running…).
I also procrastinate when it comes to beginnings. Especially large projects for which I set high expectations.
(I didn’t know this was related to ADHD til I got ADHD curious.)
My best friend knows the pattern. Every time I embark on a rewrite, I inevitably call writhing in discomfort. The buildup to beginning is agonizing. I forget this is my way until she reminds me - calm, friendly, heard it all before, not trying to change me or make me start, just there. Knowing me.
A day or two later, when I’ve plunged into it all, when I euphoric that I’m no longer writhing, she receives my ebullient text.
So is it procrastination? Or is it my way?
Do I procrastinate on the responsible, boring tasks, or is there a step along the way that stumps me? Is there always a dime that I do not possess?
David Whyte’s essay on procrastination claims it “is not what it seems… What looks from the outside like our delay; our lack of commitment; even our laziness may have more to do with a slow, necessary ripening through time and a central struggle with the core realities of any endeavor to which we have set our minds. To hate our procrastinating tendencies is in some way to hate our relationship with time itself, to be unequal to the phenomenology of revelation and the way it works its own quiet way in its very own gifted time, only emerging when the very qualities it represents have a firm correspondence in our necessarily struggling heart and imagination.”
I struggle with time. I’d rather it did not exist. Rushing stresses me. Working slowly soothes me. Often, when I set my mind to something, no path lies ahead. I must make it up myself. That’s both exciting and daunting. So, I step delicately, I pause, I reconsider, I edit, I retrace, I inch toward something that has no face or name until it reveals itself.
Whyte goes on to comfort his reader by saying, “… Procrastination when studied closely can be a beautiful opening to the way we are, a parallel with patience, a companionable friend, a revealer of the true pattern, already, we are surprised to find, caught within us; acknowledging for instance, as a writer, that before a book can be written, most of the ways it cannot be written must be tried first, in our minds; on the blank screen on the empty page or staring at the bedroom ceiling at four in the morning. Procrastination enables us to understand the true measure of our reluctance.”
These days I trust the idle aspects of creativity. I trust that once I plunge into project I will come alive, become engrossed, feel how the quiet, writhing moments leading up to the beginning are part of my beginning.
But in terms of the responsibilities of life – the bills and the toothbrushes – I know now that part of my procrastination is a fear of ineptitude. A fear that this one singular task will derail an entire day. A fear that I am incapable. Tale as old as time. For me.
Slowing down, taking a moment to ask myself why? Why am I holding back? Asking with curiosity not judgement. Asking like I would ask my daughter. Then, listening and looking for the answer.
Before I know it, a little girl hands me a dime and tells me to keep it.
