Happy January!

I am writing this on January 20, which is the deadline for this month’s Troubadour columns. In fact, the columns are due every month on the 20th.

So well done, me, right? Another deadline met!

Except that you are reading the column I intended for last month’s issue. I am submitting January’s column exactly one month late.

And the best part? It is a column about procrastination. It sounds like a dad joke: “I was going to write about procrastination but I put it off.” And yet, here we are.

I’ve always had a procrastinatory streak. Not about everything. My Google Calendar is a work of OCD art. I’m obsessive about paying bills on time. I am usually the first one at a gig, or among the first. I am chronically early to kids’ events and annoyingly over-achieving when it comes to most “homework”-type tasks.

And yet…somehow, it seems the more crucial a task might be, the harder I find it to buckle down and get it done. I can’t even swear to you that the many deadlines I do meet, aren’t at least partially a means of avoidance for the few that I don’t.

And those few – let me tell you. Doozies. PhD dissertations. Beneficial grant applications. High-profile opportunities in side-careers I love. Things I really want to be doing – deeply and truly. So what the hell kind of construct is it where the tasks that mean the most are the ones that get accomplished the last?

Well, a pretty common one, it turns out.

I always tease my kids that “later” is where teenage promises go to die. Teenagers are pretty creative avoiders. But what about the rest of us?

Sometimes, to be sure, we procrastinate because the job just sucks. Taxes? Blecch. Even if we’re getting money back, it’s a drag to sit down and sift through the greasy dregs of our everyday finances.

The only strategy that’s ever helped me with that one is the unavoidable fact that the job is not going to suck any less when I finally get to it; it will be the exact same amount of blecch, multiplied by a potential bit of time pressure, so I might as well just get the sucky part behind me and reap the benefit of a clear mind. There is no “later” that is going to make it better.

Sometimes we avoid tasks because we suck – we don’t know how to do the thing, and starting means way more than just doing the thing itself. Maybe it means learning a new bit of software, or filling out forms we don’t know the implications of. And since it’s new, it’s an open-ended commitment, so we just never set a start-time.

In this case, I have to tell myself another unavoidable truth: “Well, you’re not going to get any better at this by not doing it.” Then I start to suspect I am kind of dick because of the way I talk to myself. But still, that kind of straight talk usually helps get me there.

In both of those cases, I’ve developed a sort of unintentional mental mantra that I offer to you in case you’re in the same boat: “Do it now, make it fun.” If you say that enough, you can start to see these drudge-work tasks as a little joy-ride through the absurd. And speaking only for me, I never need to be asked twice for one of those.

But these aren’t the only reasons we procrastinate. I’ve engaged with enough click-baity pop-sci links to have read a fair amount about the psychology of procrastination – something which probably served, ironically, as a means of procrastination whenever I did it. According to “science,” another reason we procrastinate – probably the primary one – is perfectionism. The more seriously we take the assignment, the more we fear that we might not be up to the task, and the longer we put off starting the job. There’s even a name for this: perfectionistic procrastination.

Tasks that intimidate us are a bit like family reunions – they put us face to face with our own fears and faults. When it comes down to it, we don’t feel like getting the proof of our own human frailty, not on a Tuesday dammit.

There are several strategies for dealing with this one, usually involving some form of self-distancing. Essentially, this involves asking ourselves the hard questions about why we’re being, to use the scientific terminology, such a turd. What are we afraid of? Who do we think is judging us? What’s the cost of trying it and getting some part of it wrong? Would it be the worst thing in the world if we just did it, but badly? Ok, dumb question, we know the answer, but why?

In the near-term, Those Who Know usually suggest at least doing some mindless and achievable component of the chore now – setting up a spreadsheet, or making a list of tasks. Something low-stakes and accomplishable. Like “Baby Steps” in What About Bob? which is a reference only for people born between 1965 and 1973.

This is a mind-trick, really, because when you come down to it, all jobs are a series of low-stakes tasks. And that’s the point. But in advance we tend to get flooded by the entirety of them. So these recede the waters a bit.

My own experience is that “piercing the veil” like this usually ends up with me just deciding to get the whole damned thing done. Like, “OK, job, it’s late, we’re alone, we’re obviously hot for each other, let’s just do this.” Then someone puts on a metaphorical Barry White record and you couldn’t keep us away from each other if you tried.

I’ve deployed all of these versions of procrastination in my life. The part of me that procrastinates could not be any more different from the part of me that is generally OCD-level on top of tasks. And yet, there is another reason, as well, that I haven’t seen written about.

It is the raw truth that artistic folks tend to be procrastinators.

Certainly, we creative types are cursed with an outsize Douchebag Inside Our Heads, so all the above categories apply. Imposter syndrome, emphasis on the sin. But there are two more factors that creative folks in particular fight against.

One is that for artistic folks, creation is execution. We create because doing so is the only way to experience the completed product.

But for big important tasks, even mundane ones, the outcome is predetermined. That means that even if we have The World’s Coolest Way of attacking it, it doesn’t matter: it’s all and only execution. That’s the worst part of it! We already got to “see” the end result, so all that creation time feels like extraneous labor.

I know that sounds like a euphemism for “lazy,” and who knows, maybe it is sometimes. But it’s really something more along the lines of: our hyperactive brains are creation-junkies. It’s the only fuel and product of our mental factory. Once the final product exists – whether in real life or in our envisioning of it – the process feels complete. We know it’s not. But it can be very hard to spend the same energy twice to make it as tangible in the real world as it already is in the just-as-real world of our mental domains.

And that’s related to the second component: Creation is exhausting. The artistic soul is always careening between hyper-excitement and spiritual post-coital withering. Creation runs deep. We reach down into the magma that most people are happy to leave undisturbed. We clear out headspace and find a way to be more “there” than “here.” Then we’re covered in metaphorical lava for however long it takes for the embers to burn out.

It’s mentally expensive! Artists feel things hard, even if the task might seem mundane. Even these columns are hard. I try to come here only when I have a truth to tell. And those truths are emotionally costly.

It’s not something special. It’s a pain in the ass, to be honest – maybe even a disability of sorts. I’m sure many of us feel the same way: I would do it the easy way if I could. I wish I were wired that way. But instead our stupid brains have to go and fall in love with the task in order to spend the night with it. Sheesh. Lighten up, stupid brains.

So yes, for creative folks, ultimately it’s another form of avoidance, same as fear of failure or imposter syndrome or perfectionism. But it’s the avoidance of withering emotional cost.

If you fit in that last category –the procrastination of emotional expense – I don’t know if I have any great Unsolicited Advice for that one. If I did, I’d take it myself. The best I can offer is this: “Sucking at this is the entry fee for being good at something else.” I know that doesn’t get our taxes filed on time. But ideally it humanizes the confounding impulse to not do the things we care the most about having done. Ultimately it’s a posture of forgiveness. It doesn’t get the task done – for that we have to revert to the mantras above. But maybe it helps clear out the overlay of self-excoriation.

“Overlay of Self-Excoration” is a pretty good prog-rock album title, by the way. Get on that, creative types. Do it now, make it fun.

Is there something I should offer unsolicited advice about in future columns? Shoot me a line via the contact form at joshweinstein.com and let me know.