Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
Turning Old Clichés to New Maxims
By Richard Eyre

Part Two

“Never Put Off Until Tomorrow What You Can Do Today.”

It was my maternal grandmother who taught me this one – and taught it, and taught it. “Do it now.” “Don’t procrastinate.” “Get it done.”

There were a lot of these shorter variations on the theme, but her favorite was the full-blown and more philosophical-sounding “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

“You can’t even enjoy yourself when you go out to play,” she would say, ‘if you’ve got work that isn’t finished.” The funny thing was I could enjoy myself, until she came out to drag me back to finish my job.

No one could ever call Grandma a hypocrite. She herself never put off anything. She had a big household and garden, a lot to do, and she lived after the time of live-on help and before the time of modern labor-saving devices. She also had a “church job.” She also worked in the community.

I love my grandmother. I still do, and I appreciate the work ethic she taught me – an ethic that never changes. What has changed is the type of work most of us do, and the need we have for spontaneity and flexibility.

I worked in Honolulu between my sophomore and junior years of college. One weekend I made my way to the big island of Hawaii, and was trying to hitchhike from Kona, on the west coast, to Hilo, on the east. It was nearly a full day’s journey then, and I assumed I’d need several different rides to make it.

The first car that stopped for me was a beat-up, chugging old vehicle containing a wonderful native Hawaiian couple who introduced themselves as Rusty and Honey. “Where you go?” they inquired in pidgin English.

“I’m headed for Hilo,” I responded.

All day long they drove me through the interior of the island, stopping frequently to show me a waterfall or a particularly beautiful bit of jungle. They took delight in my interest. They were like children sharing their toys. Their spontaneity and joy were contagious, and I found myself having a wonderful time.

As the sun set behind us, we pulled into Hilo and I thanked them for a great day, adding that I surely felt lucky that the first car that stopped for me was going all the way to Hilo.

“Oh, we weren’t going to Hilo,” Rusty said.

“What – where were you going?”

“To the grocery store,” said Honey, matter-of-factly.

I guess the confused look on my face was a question, and Rusty answered it with words that I’ll never forget. “We can go to grocery store tomorrow, but can’t drive you to Hilo tomorrow.”

Most of us are not as carefree as Rusty and Honey. We live in a world where spontaneity and spur-of-the-moment opportunities seem in short supply. But if we examine life closely, there are often things that really can be put off without damage or detriment. (Putting off writing a memo or not quite finishing a sales report doesn’t always have the same kind of predictable negative natural consequences as not milking a cow or failing to gather the eggs or cover the haystack before a storm.) Many things today can, and sometimes should, be put off! Even the IRS has an “automatic extension.”

Procrastination can become a terrible habit; but, used selectively, it can actually be a great technique for helping us prioritize what really matters and for opening up our tight little lives to the joy of the moment, to the needs of others, to the serendipity and “happy surprises” that can be a part of our lives if we look for and welcome them.

Think about:

• A father, working hard at a project in his office, who looks out the window and notices the first warm and windy afternoon of spring – and decides to put off his work until tomorrow so that he can go fly a kite with his six-year-old today.

• A manager who is trying to finish her “to do” list for the morning and is interrupted by a phone call from an old acquaintance who is between flights at the airport. She decides to put off the rest of her list and to go to the airport and renew the acquaintance.

• A dutiful, do-it-yourself husband who is using a rare free evening to repaint the guest bedroom. As he rolls the paint, he’s thinking about his wife and how long it has been since they’ve been out alone together. He hears the garage open and realizes she’s home from her meeting earlier than she’d predicted. He decides to set the paint roller down and takes his wife to a movie instead.

Notice, in each incident, the word “decides.” When we see an opportunity to do something right now that can’t be done later and make a decision to put off what can be put off in favor of what can’t (even if the thing we put off is work and the thing we do instead is a bit frivolous or silly) – when we do this, we are using rather than abusing the technique of selective procrastination.

Maybe we’ll feel better about that technique if we have a new maxim for it – that way we’ll feel wise when we do it rather than slothful.

Always Put Off a “Put-Offable” in Favor of a “Now or Never”

Carve those words in the granite of your psyche, and perhaps the next time you “purposefully procrastinate,” you can mentally pat yourself on the back instead of feeling your long-departed grandmother kick you in the backside.