Procrastination and motivation

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.

I am fond of procrastination, not because I never get anything done, but because I use the last minute to motivate myself to get things done. I have a keen sense of how long and how much effort a task requires to accomplish, so that I can fuck off until the last minute, enjoying my free time, but always knowing exactly when to get down to work. I rarely, if ever, fail to get things done within the allotted time, even at the last minute.

Today, I did something simple. I cleaned up the dead tomato plant and removed the anti-raccoon caging from around the barrel planters in our backyard. A quick and easy and long overdue task.

I do like keeping up our backyard, not nearly as much as I enjoy harvesting heirloom tomatoes or outwitting the neighborhood raccoons, but because its a serene, secluded, meditative spot in which to hang out. Below is a circle of iron birds we array on the lower deck, a bit of lawn art that has fooled local birds into descending for a gander.

My habitual procrastination has transformed into unalloyed motivation over the past year or so, in part thanks to the influence of health problems that have given me a taste of my own mortality. I’ve started rewriting my 15+ year old novel, I’ve restarted my two blogs, and I’m churning out my Maximum Rocknroll columns as quickly as I can manage. Procrastination is an excellent motivation, but I’m really appreciating motivation for its own sake. As Isaac Asimov once said when asked what he would do if he only had six months to live: “Type faster.”

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