Sermons

March 4, 2007
Procrastination

PROCRASTINATION
a sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS:
1. From Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859)
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

2. Acts 24:25
And as he discussed justice, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened, and said, “Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity, I will send for you.”

THE SERMON
When I was in high school a couple of my friends and I started a club we called the Organization for the Continuation of Procrastination, or OFTCOP. We had one meeting, and planned to go door-to-door in our community with little jars asking for donations for OFTCOP. Of course, we never got around to it.
That was just a bit of high school silliness. Yet I admit that I can be a procrastinator sometimes. Another procrastinator, my stepdaughter, once admitted that she put things off to the last minute, but that was all right because, she explained, “I work best in a fit of frenzy.”
The Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie of Arlington Street Church in Boston is one of my favorite preachers. Many years ago, on one of her elementary school birthdays, her paternal grandmother gave her a present – a thin gold chain with a single pearl on it. It came in a little velvet box, and for six days that box sat in Kim’s dresser drawer. On the seventh she was allowed to wear it to church.
Her mother reminded her to write a thank you to her grandmother, and she tried to write it. Now, back then you didn’t just dash off an email. Kim’s mother told her to write a rough draft. Then her mother would correct the draft. Then, Kim was supposed to use a ruler to make pencil lines on a piece of stationery, use a pen to copy the corrected note onto the paper, wait for the ink to dry, and then erase the pencil lines. It seemed to Kim to be a rather big task, and she put it off.
There are 1,000 other things a child would rather do. Getting around to that thank you can even be difficult for an adult. No matter what you are doing, there are always other things you might be doing. And no matter what you are doing, there is something else you are putting off.
Kim was a child, and she had a child’s priorities. She did write the rough draft, and her mother corrected it immediately, and gave it back to her. She took the corrected copy and put it in her drawer next to the velvet box, and there it sat. Every day she thought, “Tonight I’ll finish Nana’s letter.”
Her grandmother had survived cancer, living ten years beyond the time when the doctors had pronounced that nothing could be done. At the time, Kim says, she was too young to really understand the concept of “old,” let alone “borrowed time.” But Nana’s time ran out, leaving Kim with a beautiful necklace, and an unfinished thank you note.
She was wracked with guilt. Every night she would open the little velvet box, look at the necklace and the unfinished note, and know that she was not worthy to wear the necklace. She missed her grandmother, but worse still, she felt guilt over the unfinished note. She says that she remembered thinking that if only she had written the note, and Nana had known how much she liked the necklace, it might have made her so happy that she would still be alive.
Rev. Harvie writes, “There are certain tender ages at which our mistakes are disproportionately earth-shattering, and our capacity to learn from them proportionately high. I am eternally grateful that this colossal case of procrastination could serve as the trauma that put me off of delaying, forever. It was my grandmother’s last, best gift.”

Perfectionism?
Rev. Harvie is no longer a procrastinator, thanks to her grandmother’s gift. But, according to at least one survey, twenty percent of all U.S. adults are procrastinators. Why do some of us avoid certain tasks? Some psychologists think that procrastinators have a higher-than-average level of conscientiousness, and may be putting things off because they are perfectionists. I think that Kim Crawford Harvie put off writing that note to her grandmother at least in part because she believed the note had to be perfect, and that seemed to be too big a task.
Author David Allen finds two major causes of procrastination at work in life that are related to anxiety, not laziness. The first category is things too small to worry about, tasks that are annoying and interrupt the flow of things, and for which there are “low-impact workarounds” – an example might be organizing a messy room.
The second category is things too big to control, tasks that a person might fear, things that might have great impact on a person’s life; an example might be the adult children of a senior parent trying to decide what living arrangement would be best.
Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this may actually be impossible, because there are an infinite number of things you might be doing. You are always doing something. You are doing something right now, and you are not doing something else. No matter what you are doing, you are not doing something else. It is inevitable that you are putting off that task, whatever it is.

How to procrastinate well:
So maybe the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how we might procrastinate well.
Paul Graham writes that there are three ways to procrastinate: 1) You could work on nothing. 2) You could work on something less important, or 3) You could work on something more important. That last type might be called “good procrastination.”
In the passage we read this morning from the Christian Scriptures – the book of The Acts of the Apostles – Paul was being put on trial for sedition, for belonging to a sect and for stirring up the population with his unconventional ideas. He was brought before the Roman procurator, Antonius Felix. Paul argued his case, saying that he did not belong to a sect, which was a term for a new religious group. Anything new in religion was suspect to the Romans. The Romans believed that if a religious idea was worthwhile, it should have been known since ancient times. That made Christianity suspect – if it was new, how could it be true? Paul argued that he did not belong to a sect, but that he was a loyal Jew, and had come to the Temple in Jerusalem to make a sacrifice, and a donation in the manner of other loyal Jews.
Now, we might think that Paul was being disingenuous. He was a Christian, wasn’t he? No. Paul really did consider himself to be a loyal Jew, just as Jesus had been Jewish. In Paul’s day, he and the other followers of Jesus thought they were Jews who followed the Jewish Messiah. The idea of “Christianity” as a separate religion came about later.
I mention this in a sermon on procrastination because after Paul argued his case, we are told that Felix put off making a judgment. And Paul sat in jail until Felix’s term was up and a new procurator arrived. So Felix’s procrastination resulted in a hardship for Paul.
This type of procrastination may have been what we just discussed as the first type of procrastination – you are doing nothing. Well, you are always doing something, but you are not doing an important thing that needs to be done. The second type of procrastination is doing something less important. That’s a matter of priorities – should I write my monthly report for the board, call someone who is ill, write my sermon, or call someone to get rid of the skunks that live under the Parish House? We have to decide which things that more important than others.
And then there is the third type of procrastination – we really are doing something more important. This last type, we might say, is good procrastination. That’s like the “absent-minded professor” who forgets to shave or comb his hair, and maybe he hardly looks where he is going, as he ponders some interesting question. His mind is absent from one problem because it is busy working on another problem.
Think of yourself right now. You are in church. You could always be doing something else. I’m sure you could think of something that needs to be done, but for many reasons you have decided that it is more important that you be here right now. And so while you are certainly putting something off that you might be doing, I would call this a good kind of procrastination. You are doing something more important.
Good procrastination is avoiding smaller issues in order to do the really important stuff. Well, that’s good in a sense. The people who want you to do those other things might not think that they are “smaller issues.” Some things, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them. You can ignore junk mail, but mine tends to pile up on the kitchen counter because I have a hard time deciding what is junk and what is not. Fortunately, Mickey pushes me to deal with my mail. If I ignore important things like bills, there are consequences. There are consequences if I ignore letters from friends, too.
If we ignore shoveling the snow, we can’t get out, or we get stuck. If we ignore mowing the lawn, the task eventually becomes impossible.
But it may make sense to take a Sabbath, as you are doing now, and do some thinking, take time to connect with your spiritual side, and refresh yourself. Then find a chunk of time to do those little unimportant things, like your income tax, that you’ve been putting off. There are types of work that can only be done in long, uninterrupted stretches. This may happen when the inspiration hits you; if so, go for it. So ask yourself, what’s the best thing you could be working on? And why aren’t you?

A Buddhist approach:
The Buddhist teacher Dr. Shomo Morita doesn’t believe that the fears and anxieties that lead to procrastination can be controlled by our will. They can’t be controlled by talking about them. His suggestion is not to try to exorcize our demons, but to live with them. When we accept their presence, he says, they lose their power, and our inaction dissolves.
Fear, just to chose one example, is not necessarily the enemy. We can live with our fear when we accept that it is present. Acknowledge it, and then take your concentration off of it. It’s amazing how much fear diminishes when we take our attention off of it. We defeat it when we let it be and refuse to fight it.
Buddhism recognizes that the central issues of our lives, from falling in love, to getting our taxes done, to facing death, require an ability to surrender, to give up control.
Morita writes, “Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator or unhealthy or lazy, or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die.”
Good advice. We are all imperfect. That’s a fact of being human. Accept it, decide to live with it, don’t beat yourself up about it. Remember, everyone is always putting something off. Whatever you are doing, there is something else you are not doing. Accept that, and then go and do the best you are able.
Now I’m going to contradict myself. A little while ago I said that some big tasks need for you to set aside big blocks of time. But maybe we don’t do what we need to do because the big tasks seem overwhelming. Then the best way to get things done is to replace the idea that you have to “finish it” with the idea that you will “start it.” I don’t have to finish my taxes today, but I can start. If I start enough times, I will finish them. You can fool yourself into finishing them if you just keep getting started. If I start doing the dishes enough times, I will finish them.
My friends and spiritual “fellow travelers,” when we find ourselves frozen by inaction, making ourselves miserable in our attempt to avoid misery,
May we seek to accept life on life’s terms,
embracing its angels and accepting its demons,
defeating what has defeated us by refusing to fight.
Whatever is ahead of us is ahead of us – some things we can chose, and others we cannot. The present is a gift – that’s why it is called “the present.” Life is so precious. Let’s get started.
Amen.