The biggest example is when I get up in the morning. I wait until the very last minute to get up. My goal is to get up before lunch.
This is the primary difference between me and wife Martha, The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. She couldn’t procrastinate even if I gave her a thousand dollars. Of course, I’d procrastinate in handing over that thousand dollars because that’s how I operate.
My “to-do list” is put together with this understanding: I put things on the list I know will be affected by my procrastination. If I want to get three things done in one day, I have to make a list of 20 to do.
Unfortunately, Martha hasn’t learned this about me. As long as we’ve been together, which is something like 54 years, she doesn’t get the notion that I’m a procrastinator.
I’m not even sure if she knows what that means, and I’m not going to tell her. At least, I won’t tell her today.
She believes when she gives me a list of 45 things to do, I’ll jump up and finish them in short order. But as a high-level procrastinator, that’s not how it works.
When I get a list from her, it takes me all morning to read it.
Usually, at lunchtime, she’ll say, “Well, did you get the list done yet?”
I look at her with a blank look and say, “What list?”
With a bit of growling in her voice, she responds, “You know, the list I gave you this morning of things I wanted you to do.”
“Oh, that list. I’m still working on it.”
The last time I didn’t procrastinate was August 14, 1971, when we stood before a minister who said, “Do you promise…” With a nervous stutter, I responded immediately, “I do.”
Occasionally, Martha will ask, “Are you acting like a procrastinator?”
“No, my dear,” I’ll say as calmly as possible, “I’m not acting.”
I think she’s the most antiprocrastinator I’ve ever known. She can never procrastinate; she always must get everything done before the time. If she has 60 minutes to do something, she’ll do it in less than 50.
In a marriage such as ours, we can’t both be procrastinators. That is why I stepped up to the plate and chose to be the procrastinator in our house. I’ve done a great job all these years.
Of course, there’s a cost that comes with procrastination. Solomon hit it on the head when he said in Proverbs:
“Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.”
— Proverbs 24: 33-34
As my father used to say, “You can’t kick a can down the road forever. At some point you need to stop and pick it up.”
My problem is I think I can do more than I can really do. Maybe I should be more realistic and concentrate on doing what I can do.
Dr. Snyder is a former pastor who lives with the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, wife Martha, in Ocala, Fla. His email is [email protected].
