Do not lend me your book. I will take it eagerly, promising to read it and return it soon. I will believe myself when I say these things, but they will be lies. I will not read your book, and I will never give it back.
What will happen is this: I will move it to the top of the pile on my bedside table – the pile of books I must get to next. Once there, it will become a coaster for my morning coffee, gradually acquiring dark ringed stains. When storms blow through, rain will fall from the open window, leaving the pages wavy. Months later, when I look at it, I will feel ashamed but not surprised. “I can just buy a new copy to replace it,” I will tell myself. This too will be a lie.
People talk a lot about fractured attention, and I’m as much a victim as anyone: I fall asleep to the numbing background noise of some podcast or doom scroll until I lose consciousness. But I also find time to read other books. So why am I putting off reading these? Is it that any activity, however pleasurable, becomes a chore once postponed? The smallest hint of obligation really can poison anything.
I’m reminded of a group of friends I made at university. We all studied English literature, which is to say we studied very little, mostly sitting around smoking weed and analysing interpersonal dramas that mattered deeply at the time but are now forgotten. This was not as relaxing as it sounds. In fact, it was a kind of hell. We hadn’t abandoned our ambitions completely, so we couldn’t just enjoy coasting. Nor were we prepared to work hard enough to achieve excellence, or even experience honest satisfaction.
What’s interesting, in retrospect, is that we had all chosen a degree with notoriously poor employment prospects, presumably because we genuinely enjoyed reading. Yet the very thing we loved and did freely had suddenly become a chore – simply because we had to do it.
This group of friends introduced me to a concept I’ve since thought about with maddening frequency: the Window of Opportunity. The idea is simple – the brain can only focus when this window opens. To attempt to do anything outside of the window is futile. The opening of the window is mysterious, infrequent, and entirely beyond your control (think of a Homeric poet awaiting the Muse).
While you cannot force the window, certain conditions make it less likely to want to open: being inactive, malnourished, under-caffeinated or tired. So, if it doesn’t budge, you can stroll, cook a meal, meet someone for coffee, or nap. By six in the evening, if it still shows no sign of opening, it’s best not to push. Go for pints, sleep it off, and start afresh the next day.
[ I tried an ancient cure for procrastination for a month. It was grimOpens in new window ]
You can imagine the dreadful cycles that ensue. Procrastination can make your life a total swamp.
One last anecdote appears to me relevant in this context. Someone told me about a CIA entrance test in the 1980s, but I can’t find a source so it must be apocryphal. In this test, they put prospective candidates alone in a locked room with a chicken and a sharp pencil. Those who cleanly and without hesitation stab the chicken through the neck are given the job. They are ruthless and useful sorts. Those who immediately and absolutely refuse are also given the job. It’s good to have a few ethical and decisive people in the workplace. Finally, there are those who argue and plead, and who eventually end up mangling the poor little chicken. They do not get the job. They are the procrastinators.
So, what is the actual problem? It’s tempting to say laziness. Psychoanalysis offers a more compassionate answer: fear. Fear of failure is the obvious one: if you actually try, you might discover you’re not the genius you privately suspect you are. Better to delay indefinitely than face that revelation.
[ The quest for perfection is doing you much more bad than good – here’s whyOpens in new window ]
But fear of success is just as potent. Succeed once, and suddenly the stakes are very high. Better to live comfortably and not have great distances to fall from.
Underneath both fears is an issue with ego management. A healthy ego can survive contact with the world. A fragile ego must wrap itself in protective layers.
Anyway, all this talk of ego, fear, and mangled chickens really comes back to the book on my bedside table. That fun thing I promised to do has become the gravitational centre of all my neurotic swirling. It would be nice to give the book a chance to be read. One of these days, I’ll pick it up. And when I do, I suspect the whole situation will feel a lot less epic and a lot more like finally getting around to something perfectly ordinary.