Procrastination

I thought about writing this essay later, but I guess I might as well do it now.

Procrastination will destroy your dreams one day at a time.

I was a terrible procrastinator in college. If I had a paper to write, it was getting done at 3am the night before it was due. There was no other acceptable time. I’d come back from dinner and wander the halls, shooting the shit with the other cadets, and then I’d settle down at about 11pm with my Mac Classic and a Mountain Dew, and oh, let me play some video games first. Three hours later, I’d be like, fuck, I have to get this done, and then I’d shit out some froggish leavings and hand in what was essentially a first draft, and get a B on it. Then I’d be a zombie the next day. In one computer science class, I basically did no work the entire semester, and then pulled two consecutive all-nighters to study for the final. I got a C. My grade point average in college was 3.03, far below what I could have accomplished if I wasn’t such a turd. One of my many regrets.

I don’t procrastinate much these days. Much. When you write a newsletter with a daily deadline, you have to get after it. I dive in every morning at 9am and don’t stop until it is finished. If you follow me on Twitter, you might notice that I don’t tweet (or even look at Twitter) from 9-12 in the morning. After I am done with the newsletter, then I can come up for air. By the way, social media is the number one way in which people procrastinate. You can lose two hours doomscrolling through Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. Then you look up and wonder where the time went. I use social media much more judiciously than I have in the past. By the way, Jefferies economist David Zervos had a really cool theory about technology and social media: he said that in the early days of the internet, we had a huge productivity boom (Look! I can order these plane tickets online!), and as the internet progressed, and social media appeared on the scene, then the internet became a huge productivity suck, as people spend hours and hours doomscrolling and looking at 49 photos of Fun Dinner at Pam’s.

I am very conscious of productivity sucks. A productivity suck is something that can lull you into a semi-conscious state, where your brain turns off and your mind wanders, like when you’ve quaffed three beers while watching ESPN, and you start wondering what kind of dogs Sage Steele has, while looking at Alexis Ren on Instagram. I try to free my life of productivity sucks. It’s funny, a few years back I bought one of those vintage video game systems, with 250 games from the 80s, and it was fun for a while, but after a few months I asked myself, what am I doing here, down in my basement playing Robotron for three hours? I haven’t touched that thing in two years. Basically, the only time I am going to be playing video games is if I have absolutely nothing to do, and there is never a time when I have nothing to do. If I were playing video games, it would be because I am procrastinating on something else.

I have a few ongoing items in my tickler:

·      Write two more short stories for my short story collection, NIGHT MOVES

·      Continue writing essays for my next essay collection, RULE 62

·      Get ready to move into the new house

·      Publicize the shit out of NO WORRIES

·      Learn to play the guitar

·      Plus, the ongoing stuff like the newsletter, the radio show, the class that I am teaching, petting the cats, and all the other miscellaneous crap

So I pretty much always have shit to do. I could procrastinate, for sure. I could dick around with these last two short stories, they would never get done, and then I wouldn’t have a book. I mean, lots of people do this. Have you ever met someone who said they were writing a book—for ten years? And it’s never done? The best thing to do to those people is to ask them, “How’s the book coming?” Makes them miserable. Keep asking. Make them experience shame. Maybe at some point, they will get sick of people asking, and actually write the damn book. Doers do. Talkers talk. Nothing you haven’t heard before.

Here's how procrastination will ruin your life: you will be lying on your deathbed, and you will regret not doing X or Y or Z. Because you fucked around and never did it. Now, this would be acceptable if instead of doing X or Y or Z, you were doing something equally worthwhile. Dumb example, but let’s say instead of taking up painting, you decided to travel the world instead. That would be equally worthwhile. But that’s not how people usually spend their time—they spend it in front of the TV or computer, growing lichens under their armpits. I have never heard the story where someone is laying on their deathbed and they’re completely satisfied with all the time they spent watching Jetsons reruns.

Look. It’s a gorgeous day in South Carolina right now. 75 and sunny, no humidity. I could be going for a walk. I could be enjoying a cigar on the back porch. I could be sitting in the bar, outside, at Frank’s Outback. All of those things would be fun. But I haven’t written an essay in about a week, and as much as I find writing essays pleasurable, there is an end to my means: I have an audience that I want to keep happy so that hopefully they will pre-order my book. Or maybe this essay will get forwarded around and I’ll get more subscribers and I’ll be writing for even more people, next time. It is work. So I’m sitting here on the couch with my cat Wendy, tapping away on the most beautiful day of the year. Fucked-up priorities? Some people are driven to create, some people are driven to succeed, and some people are driven to be idle. That’s the way I look at it.

Honestly, the one thing that I procrastinate on is taking time off. I am always procrastinating on vacations. The last big vacation I took was to Greece in 2021. The best vacation ever. You’d think I would take more of them. I took a short 4-day vacation to Miami in August. Stayed at the Faena and spared no expense—it was an amazing trip. I could definitely stand to take more vacations, but it is tough to take time away from the newsletter, and I just get busy with shit, so I never do. But the thing about the vacations is that I remember the vacations—I don’t remember all the days I spend grinding away at my desk. He who makes the most memories wins. So clearly, I am deficient in this regard. And I have no idea when my next vacation will be—it’s a sprint until the book comes out in January, then I’m moving into the new house on February, and it will be a few months before we get settled. At least I live someplace nice.

How do you stop procrastinating? You just fucking do the thing. There’s no tips or tricks. I can tell you that when I got my MBA, I worked way ahead of schedule. I was weeks ahead in class. Probably because I was super excited about the stuff I was learning. Probably because I had a bit more maturity. Also, perhaps, because I was motivated by money. I was determined to get a 4.0 because I thought it would get me a job. I was right—it did help get me a job. When something isn’t enjoyable, you tend to procrastinate on it. If you have a list of shit to do, you tend to do the enjoyable things first, and leave the annoying ones for later. Later sometimes means never. And then you’re stuck. Just stop being a shitbird and do the fucking thing, already. How’s that for advice?

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I sent the link out for people to buy NO WORRIES last week. The email went out to 7,240 recipients. There were 241 link clicks. Great Odin’s Raven! What does a guy have to do to sell a book around here? Taylor Swift videos? Shirtless selfies? Ice cream recipes?

I don’t write bad books. Controversial books, sometimes, but not bad books. You are going to want to read this one. It’s easy and breezy, and it will change the way you think about money. Come on. Hook a brother up. Give me a pre-order. You liked the last one, you will love this one.

http://buynoworries.com

Thanks.