In praise of procrastination or fake it till you make it.

I read an interesting article today about the benefits of procrastination. The author, an academic and, by his account, a life long procrastinator, argues that in the avoidance of one task we can often accomplish many other, smaller tasks. He makes the point that there is potential in procrastination: "Our best books are the unfinished ones" he says. Things unfinished don't have to bear the weight of being perfect or whole or complete.

I am not a chronic procrastinator. I am generally, almost anally, prompt with most things. I like to finish things, to check off the to do list, but when I do procrastinate, I think it does have to do with not wanting to fail at something, generally something that matters a great deal to me. I have procrastinated a lot on finishing my thesis even though it is the only thing that stands in between me and being finally, blessedly done with graduate school. I want to be done with grad school more than almost anything else, but here I am, a semester after I thought I would finish, still picking away at it. I think I avoid it sometimes because I'm so uncertain that I am doing it correctly. I worry that it will be crap so I ignore it for weeks at a time. During those weeks, I clean the house, I read, I knit, I watch episode after episode of Law and Order on cable. I fill the time, but I don't move forward with anything tangible or meaningful.

I'm coming to realize I do the same things with fitness/weight/health stuff. I know that I'm not perfect and the strain of wanting to be perfectly fit and healthy (and, of course, skinny. I am trying to change my internal goals from being weight oriented to being health oriented, but it is slow going. If I could eat nothing but candy corn and wear a size 6, most days I'd gladly take that deal.) makes me put off doing the things that will get me there. I don't want to work out because I feel like I am too out of shape to work out. I think that, often times, I compare my current self with an idealized version (the "what I'd be like if I did everything I should do") and since I don't meet that, I don't want to try. Grrr.

I'm going to go to the gym tonight though. I'm going to try to pretend to be a healthy, gym going person and do the things I think that sort of person would do. I hope that, if I keep doing that, it will eventually stick and I might become that kind of person. I going to try to pretend to be a productive grad student as well. We'll see how it goes.