Why I procrastinate
New years resolutions, life hacks, and human nature
It's that time of year when everyone is telling us how to form new habits so we can become Better People. I'm here to suggest that we pay attention to the resistance we feel, rather than continuing to shove ourselves along.
I've noticed some patterns in my own procrastination. Instead of wondering what's wrong with me or trying to find some sort of behavioral hack to prod myself into doing something, I consider the situation.
Why can't I get myself to do this? Let’s set aside the pervasive idea that humans are inherently lazy and bad. If we look for a reason, there's usually some sort of answer that makes my inaction seem entirely reasonable.
What I need to do is overwhelming
I have gone through long streaks where I just sort of feed myself, somehow, despite not really cooking. I make endless variations of the same lentil soup. I eat oatmeal every day. I roast everything. I throw some things in a pot and eat it until it's gone, then make something else.
I go through other phases where I happily cook actual meals. I make my own pasta and pivot to lasagna when the ravioli fails. I make bagels and donuts and all sorts of elaborate experiments.
The difference isn't when I have access to a nice kitchen, time to cook, or a good grocery store, although those are secondary factors. The problem is that I am overwhelmed by meal planning. Have me walk into a huge, well stocked grocery store and I panic and behave as if I've never eaten food before in my life. I grab a sack of oatmeal and run out. You might think what I need is an ingredient list. Alas, I am curiously incapable of finding things in grocery stores, so I wander up and down the aisles until I have lost my will to live. This doesn't take very long. Luckily, I bounce back from this malaise as soon as I leave the store, even if I still have nothing to eat.
I need the choices narrowed down. There's an awful little grocery store near Toronto's Gerrard Square, which I prefer over the much nicer, larger store across the street because it has a section with concerningly discounted items. I start there and construct meal plans on the fly based on this mystery ingredient and what's in stock.
When I'm house sitting I open the fridge to see what perishables have been left behind and it becomes a cooking challenge. I’m suddenly able to concoct all sorts of meal ideas in order to use up the ingredients. The same thing happened when a neighbor gave me a cabbage the size of Little Tike's Cozy Coupe and a five gallon bucket full of a vegetable I needed to use google image search in order to identify. Despite having nothing other than salt and mustard, I came up with a dozen ways to cook them using the random ingredients I had on hand.
Like my roommate's overly enthusiastic pitbull who would frantically bark and jump whenever we were eating, yet who sat placidly when we went to the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market for donuts, I freeze and blank when there are too many options. Narrow them down and I'm suddenly a creative wiz at finding a way forward.
What I need to do is actually not that important
I went to a community college in New Jersey, which meant that I fell into a social circle that was predominantly Latino. After dating a woman from Costa Rica for a year, I thought I'd picked up the basics of Spanish. When I got to Mexico I realized that I just knew why they were making fun of me and why their moms were yelling at them.
For the next decade I would occasionally talk about how I wanted to learn Spanish. I even signed up for a class through Hunter College's continuing education department, where we were given Hershey's kisses for each correct answer. It was a delightful experience which did not change my trajectory of not learning any Spanish despite being surrounded by it.
Have I mentioned that my mother is a Spanish teacher? Sure, she didn't teach me as a child and she's not fluent, but she certainly would have taught me if I'd asked her to.
I expanded this pattern of pretending to want to learn languages once I moved to Canada. I made a few vague attempts to enroll in those mysterious free French classes for immigrants. I created accounts on Rosetta Stone and other self-directed programs I could access through the library.
Then one day I was able to figure out how to enroll in those previously mythical government French classes. I attended each session eagerly, despite it being so incredibly dull that I asked my doctor about getting an ADHD evaluation. I worked my way up from Dog Man to Captain Underpants to the Babysitter's Club to adult books. I tried various conversation groups to find one that felt like a good fit for me and ended up enthusiastically bumbling my way through philosophy discussions in my toddler level French vocabulary. I forced friends to watch a lot of bad French movies with me. I began a DuoLingo streak that continues 632 days later. I didn't share my DuoLingo statistics at the end of the year, like the app encourages me to, because I'm concerned my friends will stage an intervention.
What changed? Did I suddenly discover the key to self control and stop being lazy? My life hack was learning that most care work programs in Canada receive government funding and thus need to be bilingual. This means that if Adrienne ever stops paying me, I would likely need to speak French conversationally in order to get a job in my field. Hopefully I will continue working for Adrienne for a long time. Even so, reaching the point where I can discuss the most difficult day of someone's life in French is going to take a while.
Learning to speak Spanish and French seemed like something I should do. I didn't have any real reason to learn, though, aside from wanting to be the kind of person who spoke Spanish. It seemed a little bit rude to move to Canada and not learn French. Alas, like running a marathon, studying a language requires a massive time commitment and involves an immediate backslide the moment you dial down your commitment. It just wasn't worth the investment to study unless I was serious about it, unless I had a real reason to learn. When I had a reason to learn I suddenly became self motivated.
What I need to do is probably pointless
I got a notice from the Canadian tax authorities (the CRA) accusing me of paying taxes in neither the US nor Canada. This seemed preposterous, since I'm a full-time employee. I was unable to provide the tax transcript they wanted, because staff shortages meant I couldn’t verify my identity with the IRS (the US tax authorities). I wasn't even required to file most of the forms they wanted to see. I replied, reminding them that they have access to the IRS database, so they could just confirm things themselves.
They responded by denying my claims and sending me a huge bill with loads of penalties.
For the next two years I would occasionally manage to force myself to reply to their latest letter. I would spend a few hours gathering and organizing paperwork, getting caught in circles of two-factor authentication and password resets, having to navigate all sorts of terribly designed websites that refused to accept my hyphenated legal name or my apartment number with a letter in it or my foreign address. I repeatedly had to get on video with various government agents in order to verify my identity. I would spend an afternoon or a day on these tedious tasks. A few weeks or months later, the CRA would reply with a new list of demands. Often they would demand things I'd already submitted.
I'm bored just writing about it.
Why was it such a struggle to find the motivation to reply to their letters and hopefully clear my name? Because even though it was a lot of money to me, it's small potatoes to the CRA. No one touched my file twice. It was always a new person, going through it quickly to get it off their desk and keep their stats up. They pressed the button to decide which form letter to send and it was gone from their life forever. No one was going to seize my bank accounts or send me to jail. Maybe I would be stuck playing this little game with the CRA for the rest of my life. While annoying, it had no real impact other than a vague ominous stress and a souring of my previous enthusiasm for becoming a Canadian citizen.
Each step I took felt entirely pointless and unnecessary because it was. They had all the information they needed before they first accused me of fraud. It wasn't about missing information. They’ve audited me the past several years and I’ve had the same job and the same salary, so I knew there were no major issues with my taxes. It was a nonsense game I just happened to be chosen for.
Eventually, the CRA conceded that I hadn't committed tax fraud, reversed the bill and penalties, and closed the audit.
This is the story of so many bureaucratic dealings. We get stuck up in circles for mysterious reasons and know our actions have little to no bearing on whether or not it's ever resolved. The issue isn't that we've done something wrong, it's that we've been randomly selected or someone made a typo that's uncorrectable. The time we spend on hold or finding a way to fax documents is all a waste, while the real issue is a lack of concern on the behalf of the agency that's persecuting us.
Don't set yourself up to fail
Let's stop assuming that when we can't get ourselves motivated to do something that the problem is us. Let's stop trying to force ourselves to be some mythical ideal version of a person — someone endlessly productive, someone who's creative on demand, someone without human needs — and embrace who we are.
We’re human.
Resolutions that have worked for me
Perhaps the clear, measurable resolutions we're encouraged to make work for you. I have a problem with being a little too enthusiastic about measuring things. I’m that person circling the block to get my step count to a certain number. I found myself miserably doing things that were supposed to be fun and meaningful. I was turning my life into a series of obligations. Things are not optimal when my life has been drained of delight and wonder.
The past few years I've chosen a theme I wanted to shift towards. I wanted to stop treating life like a series of boxes to check and step into the moment. I started by on catching myself doing something in order to cross something off a real or theoretical list. Was I calling someone because it had been a certain amount of time or was I calling because I wanted to talk to them? Was I going to a gallery opening because I felt like I should be the kind of person who went to gallery openings? Did I want to go for a walk right now or was I just begrudgingly doing it to maintain a streak on a habit tracker app? It's amazing how just about anything, no matter how inherently fun, can be turned into a chore.
I slowly shifted away from doing things because I was supposed to (or wanted to want to) do them and started paying more attention to what I wanted to do.
The more I paid attention to what I wanted, the more I realized how ironic I was. I did a lot of things ironically. I distanced myself from what was going on and was spending a lot of mental effort judging people and things. I was also spending a lot of time feeling judged.
So, I decided to embrace being earnest. I stopped pretending to be enjoying things ironically. I stepped into the moment and just enjoyed them. I said yes to every event I was invited to that took place in a church basement or VFW hall. I caught myself when I was being sarcastic and instead said what I meant. The more I paid attention to my judging others and feeling judged by them, the more I realized my internal judgement was about a misalignment of my values. I started listening to that.
I realized how afraid I was to feel foolish. The next logical step was to embrace embarrassing myself. A day I felt a little foolish was a good day, because I was opening myself up to learning, connection, and new experiences. Being ready to say something unintentionally hilarious is critical to learning a language. It's also critical to learning most things, at least for me. Lessons connected to an emotion -- be it a tinge of shame or the joyful moment of connection over something accidentally funny -- stick with me in a way classroom lessons never do. If I'm not occasionally feeling foolish, it probably means I'm stagnant. I'm hiding from new experiences, new people, and meaningful connections.
This year's resolution
This year I'm trying to accept a lesson that I keep learning over and over again: trying to control things is both futile and unnecessary.
I’m a year — or a lifetime — late to this lesson. Last winter I kept making plans, then having them fall apart, then making new plans. Only the remainders of previous plans made each round of new plans more complex. Sometimes I resist learning a lesson until there really is no way around it. It’s painfully clear that I cannot plan my way into having control of my life. I can anticipate all sorts of potential outcomes and the universe will always be more creative than I am.
The thing is, I can deal with whatever comes up. I’ve figured things out plenty of times before. Help has always materialized when I need it most.
If I’m open to it, that is. When I’m wedded to a plan, I often fail to notice the opportunities for support that come my way.
So, this year my goal is to see what life has in store for me. I’m trying to stop fighting the current and instead to be open to the opportunities that come when I go with the flow.
Anne Helen Petersen quote of the week:
“Exhaustion and burnout suck, but they also play a vital role in bringing people from saintly or superhuman back to regular human level.”
Are people who grew up in poor communities better prepared to tackle the challenges of care work?
“My experience of becoming affluent has led to an understanding that the more financial security we have, the less we need each other for support because we can just buy it/hire it/delegate it. We are more isolated from our community because we are self-sufficient, we have everything we need. Except we don’t.”
Adam Gaffney ponders when our default to providing ICU care creates more problems than it solves:
“The authors of the Lancet Respiratory Medicine study also describe the radical post-World War II pivot from a “paternalistic” medical culture, in which doctors would unilaterally withhold interventions—like intubation—they felt were not beneficial for a patient, to what they call “autonomy without context.” Critical medical decisions, they note, have increasingly been pushed to family members who aren’t always given adequate medical context or an understanding of the ramifications of their decisions, much less a clear recommendation as to the best next step. Not only can this lead to confusion; it can impose a scarring, unbearable psychological ordeal on loved ones.”
The Toronto YMCA has a workshop about the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) coming up on January 24.
I know you well, and I'm not buying that you really care that much about how other people see you. You get too much done to consider yourself a procrastinator. You might push off things you really would rather not do for things you want to do, but not a procrastinator. You tell me to be kind to myself, take your own advice (if what you wrote is in fact how you really feel).
“Things are not optimal when my life has been drained of delight and wonder.” Thank you for writing this. I needed to read it.