If Procrastination is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna be Right.

It’s not quite what you think…

There’s an insatiable drive to swallow the biggest frog first, to start eating that elephant today.

You know what I say? Forget about it. Leave the car payment for tomorrow. Don’t bother with that doctor’s appointment today. Your kid can get a bath later.

Just kidding.

What I’m actually talking about is this:

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

This quote is often misattributed to John Lennon, Bertrand Russell, T.S. Elliot and a host of others. It’s actually by the author of “Phrynette Married”, a book published in 1912 written by Marthe Troly-Curtin.

There’s no conceivable reason you should delay something that’s both truly urgent and important.

You may be able to justify putting off something that’s important, yet not urgent or that’s urgent and unimportant.

And you can probably come up with plenty of reasons to delay things that are neither urgent nor important.

(Shoutout to the Eisenhower Decision Matrix!)

The problem is that we push a lot of tasks to the ‘urgent+important’ category. Maybe more than is reasonable or logical.

Some things really can wait.

The pressure from your manager, your mother, your partner and your own overblown expectations may tell you otherwise.

Once you slide the unnecessary bits off your plate, you have found time- now how do you spend it?

You can spend the time in a state of dread, worrying about the things you’ve moved to the back burner, concerned that they’ll come bite you in the rear for not addressing them immediately.

Or you can enjoy the time in a state of bliss. I recommend a Truly Rejuvenating Experience™ (it’s not a real trademark but I like how it looks so roll with it for a bit).

In European countries you see businesses close midday when the streets go a little quiet and everyone just takes a break.

In the Western world, chance are it would feel bizarre and even downright irritating if everything closed during your lunch break, preventing you from running a couple quick errands before you sprint back to work.

I think we need to cultivate a more welcoming attitude towards occasional laziness and relaxation.

Growing up, my family was always rush, rush, rushing from one task to the next. We (thought we) thrived at light speed and mowed through everything from routine household tasks to larger crises.

Our motto was “why put off till tomorrow what can be done today”. Constant motion was our brand. Nothing could wait. Even to the point of giving the kitchen floor a quick vacuum at 10pm before turning in for bed.

It was instilled in me at such a young age that I assumed being busy all of the time and finding exclusively productive ways to spend every waking moment was both a normal and positive thing.

Newsflash to sweet, young, naïve Elouise: it is neither. It leads to burnout as I would learn in college.

A couple of years ago, my family had an enlightening conversation. I brought up that I sometimes felt guilty when I took a break. Imagine my surprise when, in turn, we each admitted to the same guilt when we relaxed.

We each thought we were the only ones experiencing it but were surprised and validated to hear it had affected everyone.

(What are the chances we’re all a bunch of uptight killjoys? Crazy, right!? Just joking.)

We’ve all subsequently grown to invite a little more time for sitting and doing nothing — or doing something purely for the heck of it — and I can say with 100% confidence that we’re all better for it.

Stress levels have dropped, some of us lost weight, we’re sleeping better.

Not only that, but we found ourselves more refreshed and ready to tackle tasks as opposed to running ourselves into the ground and forging onwards.

Society makes it a bit difficult to step off the race track, but doing so has invited a balance we never had in our family.

(To be fair, we started off on the extreme side of the spectrum so any step was a step in the right direction).

If I’m honest, I have to admit I still sometimes feel a little pang of guilt when I realize I’ve just spent 3 hours sunken into the couch watching X-Files reruns with my feet up. Granted I only do it once a week, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

Last week I gave myself a pedicure, not for any specific event, but just to pamper myself.

My usual system is to slap on some extra moisturizer the night before, do a quick file and use an ultra-fast drying one coat paint. (I’m still pretty much an uptight killjoy as you can see).

But this night was different. I was planning on making it a whole affair — scented oils, a soft guitar playlist and time for both a base coat and top coat.

Ladies (and lads, if you like): this was a Truly Rejuvenating Experience™

While I watched the bits of lavender swirl around my feet soaking in the tub of milky warm water I got that familiar feeling of guilt. Shouldn’t I be doing something useful?

I immediately took inventory of things in the moment. Anything truly important and urgent I’m putting off? Nope.

How do I feel about the time I’ve spent relaxing? Sinking further into my seat I thought to myself ‘Damn Good’.

The only problems with ignoring the shame of kicking back are (a) things start getting left undone or neglected, or (b) you feel like the time you spent “relaxing” wasn’t worthwhile.

If you’ve ever ordered some overly-chocolatey dessert from a restaurant (that doesn’t even actually taste that good) because your friend promised they’d eat half but then they didn’t and so you ended up eating it all yourself and you waddled out to the car afterwards, cursing yourself each step for putting more food in your belly… *deep breath* then you know exactly what I mean.

The experience was supposed to be a treat but it made you feel awful and now you regret every moment/bite of it.

That’s not supposed to happen. You’re not doing “treat time” right.

The same goes for time spent relaxing.

Booking time for what’s supposed to be a nice, relaxing boat ride with your boo and your mother-in-law when you know darn well that you have less than ideal chemistry with one of the aforementioned parties (ahem) is not how you should be relaxing.

The criteria for a Truly Rejuvenating Experience™ goes something like this:

• it’s not burdensome to do (model planes, this might mean you)
• it doesn’t bring up frustration or impatience (like counting down the minutes until the stupid app says you can stop meditating)
• you honestly enjoy it
• you can be yourself when you partake in the activity (you don’t feel forced to “perform” around others)
• you’re with people you like, even if that just means yourself
• you don’t have something that genuinely needs to be handled right now looming over your head

You hitting these points? Then you’re doing relaxation right.

There’s no need for the guilt, unless you’re into that kind of thing. You can put things off within reason. There’s no need to feel shame for standing still once in a while.

I agree wholeheartedly with Marthe Troly-Curtin who I feel put it best:

“time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time”.