I was having a mildly heated debate the other day with a dear friend who was utterly adamant that procrastination and laziness are one and the same. I wholeheartedly disagreed. In my mind, laziness is not doing something. Procrastination is wanting, or needing to do something, but inexplicably providing yourself with roughly a million reasons why watching the latest season of ‘Reacher’ with a tub of ice cream would be a better use of your time.
The discussion then went one step further, with my friend remarking that, according to my logic, I have been procrastinating with regard to a particular creative endeavour that is indeed taking time to come to fruition. No. I implored. I consider that to be a necessary gestation period. Something altogether different. Every so often we wait to do something until the time is right, I argued. In the end, we agreed to disagree. How wonderfully grown up.
It seems like only a few months ago I was at my God-daughter’s christening. Last week I was sat in a restaurant congratulating her on her University offers. This is the part where I pull out all the cliches: The clock is ticking; Time does indeed wait for no man. Or woman; Life is not a dress rehearsal; And my personal favourite, gather ye rosebuds while ye may. As we age, we can spend so much of our lives in obligation, between work and family commitments; we can often lose track of what truly makes us happy. And when we do recall a long-lost dream, we tell ourselves we are too old now. What poppycock.
Colonel Sanders started his well-known fried chicken business at the ripe old age of sixty-five with a hundred-dollar Social Security cheque. The singer Susan Boyle was a church volunteer when she won Britain’s Got Talent aged forty-seven. And the French Post Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne got his first exhibition at fifty-six. It would seem success and old age are not mutually exclusive.
We can give ourselves all the excuses under the sun as to why we ought to start that project tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. But sometimes we just need to bite the bullet, roll our sleeves up and get on with it. And success need not always be the goal. I have another dear friend who is always telling me he is not destination-oriented, but is ‘all about the journey’. Wise words indeed. If simply learning to play the piano is what you really want to do, you do not need to have a recital at The Manoel Theatre in mind. Just enjoy the process of banging away at the keys each week like a toddler on a sugar high.
Whether it’s starting that business you have secretly always wanted to do, booking that trip to some far-flung corner of the globe, or buying some oil paints and a canvas. There is no time like the present. Stop being lazy, stop procrastinating, stop waiting for the gestation period to slowly come to an end, and ‘Just Do It’.
