Famous Procrastinators
Procrastination is perilous but it does not necessarily mean an unsuccessful life. Some tasks can be completed in a day or two of concentrated work, perfectly suited to procrastination. Artists whose inspired works are best created in a flurry of energetic activity may well benefit from occasionally procrastinating. Also, the virtues from other abilities can be used to overshadow its harmful effects. If you are smart, beautiful, talented, and rich, you can likely get away with putting tasks off. Consequently, there are several famous and successful procrastinators, almost too many to choose from. For example, Neville Chamberlain may be accused of irrationally putting off the war with Germany (though you could argue he genuinely thought he could achieve "peace in our time"). Agatha Christie, possibly the best mystery author ever, apparently fretted terribly before writing each of her 94 novels. The director, John Huston, finished editing the African Queen (ranked #17 in the top 100 American movies) only days before its release.
Here we review a selection of four famous delayers: St. Augustine, Leonardo da Vinci, Samuel Coleridge, and Douglas Adams. If you a know of a few other good examples, please contact Dr. Piers Steel with the details as your help identifying them would be greatly appreciated.
St. Augustine
St. Augustine lived in the fourth century and was made partly famous for his licentious behavior. The musician Sting even wrote a song featuring this saint/sinner. Today we might describe him as a recovering sex addict. From the age of seventeen he started down the path of sexual hedonism, leading him to abandon Christianity all together two years later.
However, over the rest of his life he struggled to return to his faith and overcome his sexual addiction. He taught Manichaeism for nine years, a religious dualism that stressed ascetical practices and was meant to free the spirit from physical concerns. Later, he was a great follower of St. Ambrose, who convinced him to return to mainstream Christianity. Still, now in this thirties, sex was a temptation he could not resist. In his own words:
And when Thou didst on all sides show me that what Thou said was true, I, though convinced of its truth, only repeated my dull and drowsy words, "Right away, one minute, leave me but a little." But "right away" wasn't ever right now, and my "little while" went on for a long while . . . But I, wretched young man, even more wretched than in my youth, begged you for chastity yet said, "Make me chaste and continent, but not yet!"
His decision to delay renouncing his physical desires was a significant source of anguish for him. The extent of his guilt can be seen in his written confessions: "Streams gushed from my eyes, an acceptable sacrifice to you, my God. And I poured out my heart to you, saying, 'How long? How long? Why not put an end to my uncleanness right now?'" Ultimately, he found the necessary inspiration by reading from the bible one of Paul's letters, (in a set of circumstances where he felt God himself was directly him to a relevant passage), which strongly admonishes against the desires of the flesh (i.e., " Not in orgies or drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ...").
The story of St. Augustine highlights the role that temptation has in procrastination. When we procrastinate, we usually forgo pursing a more important goal in favor of a more immediately pleasurable alternative. In the long run, we would have better off if we had resisted the temptation. For us, it is usually deals with the mundane. We forgo cleaning the garage in favor of watching the television. For St. Augustine, his struggle was between chastity now, and ensuring later acceptance in heaven, or the pleasures or the flesh, and later risking an eternity of suffering.
St. Augustine also demonstrates the power of temptations, strong enough that people would risk their souls to pursue them. If you don't take your own temptations seriously, they can easily endanger whatever you hold dear, causing us to put off activities that would help our family, health, or career. Also, the guilt felt when we give into them can be crushing.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was a man of incredible talent. He explored almost every field available to him, in both science and art. He made significant contributions in engineering, architecture, biology, botany, anatomy, math, and physics. He sculpted, painted, both portrait and mural (e.g., The Last Supper) and made plans for ingenious machines that wouldn't be built for centuries (e.g., planes, submarines). He also never finished a project on time.
Part of what made Leonardo such a "Renaissance Man" was that he was distractible as he was talented. Jacob Bronowski, the scientific historian, speaks about his procrastination. His talents and energy were often wasted in doodles and unfinished projects. The Last Supper was only finished after his patron threatened to cut off all funds. Mona Lisa took twenty years to complete. The Adoration of the Magi, an early painting, was never finished and his equestrian projects were never built.
His procrastination caused him much grief in later years. Despite his varied contributions, he felt he could have achieved much more. Given his talents, it is without doubt that more of his aspirations could have become a reality in his own time. So much was half-completed that he appealed to God, “Tell me if anything ever was done. Tell me if anything was done.”
The cause of Leonardo's procrastination appears to be distractibility. Today, we might even characterize Leonardo as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. Being unable to focus on one project until completion is highly predictive of procrastination. His distractibility, jumping from topic to topic, allowed him to contribute in a wide variety of fields. However, it is doubtful whether such as strategy could create more than a dilettante today, even with Leonardo's ability (i.e., he was said to be able to paint with one hand and write with the other, simultaneously). Thanks to efforts over the last few hundred years, including da Vinci's of course, contributing new knowledge often requires many months of continued focus.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a famous eighteenth century poet, one we all probably learned about in school. Two of his better known poems include The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan (i.e., " In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure-dome decree").
Coleridge was also one of the most infamous procrastinators of all time. Over his life, publishers were constantly reporting imminent pieces from Coleridge that ultimately failed to appear. Today, scholars find most of his works was left in fragments, brilliant fragments but incomplete, and consequently doomed to obscurity.
Coleridge himself describes his procrastination as "a deep and wide disease in my moral Nature . . . Love of Liberty, Pleasure of Spontaneity, these all express, not explain, the fact." As Molly Lefebure describes him in her book, A Bondage of Opium, "his existence became a never-ending squalor of procrastination, excuses, lies, debts, degradation, failure" (p. 25).
Of note, his work, Kubla Khan, was also never actually finished. Coleridge contends that it was based on an opium inspired dream that was interrupted because a " Person from Porlock" came along. This has become the most famous excuse in all literature as scholars and other writers recognize this for what it is, a fib. For example, the English poet Stevie Smith wrote a piece titled Thoughts about the Person from Porlock, where she made it clear that she didn't believe Coleridge's story and longed to have such a fictional person come by and interrupt her own work.
The sad but mercurial life of Samuel Coleridge exemplifies two cause of procrastination. First, he was an impulsive individual, ruled by his passions. Impulsiveness is a great predictor of irrational delay, making people more sensitive to pleasures of the moment and thus creating great difficulties in concentrating on long-term goals. Little motivation is felt until deadlines become imminent. Second, his addiction to opium had a two fold effect. Drug addiction makes people more impulsive in itself, thus increasing procrastination. It also provides a powerful temptation. Consequently, Coleridge was constantly beset with the choice between smoking opium or finishing one of his many works. Opium often won out.
Douglas Adams
Surprising for a professional writer, Douglas Adams' ability to avoid writing was described as "legendary." Despite accruing nine books to his name before his death on May 11, 2001, he hated writing. Cups of tea, baths, and days in bed were his ways of putting off. He never overcame procrastination himself, but required publishers and editors to lock him in rooms and glower at him until he produced. This is not an exaggeration according to Adams or his friend Steve Meretzky. As Steve puts it, "Douglas has raised procrastination to an art form. Hitchhikers Guide would never have gotten done if I hadn't gone over to England and virtually camped out on his doorstep."
Of note, Adams appears to have some kinship with Samuel Coleridge, as Robert Fulford notes (Globe and Mail, August 6, 1997):
In 1987, Douglas Adams put the Porlock story to ingenious use in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. His plot has Coleridge discovering, in the dream, how to create a time machine--which, Adams's characters believe, shouldn't have happened at the end of the 18th century. So someone must go back to that English farm in 1797 and prevent a time machine from being prematurely invented; the Adams character becomes the person from Porlock who interrupts Coleridge's writing.
Sadly, Douglas Adams' procrastination robbed us of a tenth book, The Salmon of Doubt. For over ten years, he had promised delivery but died before even finishing a first draft. Like Coleridge, fragments of it remain, but not enough to piece together a coherent novel.
The major reason for Adams' chronic delaying appears to be task aversiveness. Though he was an able writer and extremely creative, he found putting pen to paper unpleasant. He put it off as long as possible, and then produced in a frantic rush when eventually necessary. With his wealth from this earlier bestsellers, it became increasingly less necessary and these delays stretched into years.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~steel/procrastinus/cases/cases.html#Leonardo