DAY DREAMER: Doing It Tomorrow

Amrita Singh / Jul 18, 2008, 00:58 IST

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I've spent a lifetime keeping people waiting.

I've spent a lifetime keeping people waiting. Turning up in the evening for an afternoon meeting. Catching a train just seconds before it is to leave, filling up forms in the last minute and paying my mobile bills only after my outgoings have been barred.
Which usually happens after one has been given a 15-day window from the due date to pay up. My friends, who always do everything on time, don't quite get this habit and call it laziness.
I'd rather go by what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say. Known for its political correctness, it describes my habit as procrastination, which means putting off things for a later date, often an acquired habit.
But of late my acquired habit is getting a bad name. A research study by Piers Steel, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary, left me feeling low.

It says, "Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task." Sigh!
I did a bit of googling for everyone feeling let down by this research and found that we have a better sense of time management than others.
That explains why, with our daydreaming and our urge to clean cupboards or rearrange bookshelves the night before the exam, or check our e-mails 20 times an hour when we have to file a story, we still manage to complete our work just ahead of deadline.

However, what cheered me most was this bit about Albert Einstein. It seems he procrastinated about learning to ride a bicycle for so long that he did not learn to ride one until he was 23.
Surely, if he could do it then we shouldn't be faulted for a little daydreaming! My own experience is that if one postpones
doing something long enough, one may not have to do it at all.
I called off dinner with a friend at the last minute and didn't bother to inform her until she called. My friend was, of course, furious but the situation got resolved on its own. But friends being friends know what's in your interest.
The other day, she invited me for lunch. I waited and waited and there was no sign of her. Then she called and said, "Hi! I just put off calling you up for too long." Laziness or deferment or whatever, one doesn't bother being politically correct anymore.

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