"Well-researched...[Soon] argues that in many cases eminent
figures have done great work while putting off work they were supposed
to be doing. Procrastination might, for some people, be part of
innovation and the creative process." -- Wall Street Journal
A fun and erudite celebration of procrastination
An entertaining, fact-filled defense of the nearly universal tendency to
procrastinate, drawing on the stories of history's greatest delayers,
and on the work of psychologists, philosophers, and behavioral
economists to explain why we put off what we're supposed to be doing and
why we shouldn't feel so bad about it.
Like so many of us, including most of America's workforce, and nearly
two-thirds of all university students, Andrew Santella procrastinates.
Concerned about his habit, but not quite ready to give it up, he set out
to learn all he could about the human tendency to delay. He studied
history's greatest procrastinators to gain insights into human behavior,
and also, he writes, to kill time, "research being the best way to avoid
real work."
He talked with psychologists, philosophers, and priests. He visited New
Orleans' French Quarter, home to a shrine to the patron saint of
procrastinators. And at the home of Charles Darwin outside London, he
learned why the great naturalist delayed writing his masterwork for more
than two decades.
Drawing on an eclectic mix of historical case studies in
procrastination--from Leonardo da Vinci to Frank Lloyd Wright, and from
Old Testament prophets to Civil War generals--Santella offers a
sympathetic take on habitual postponement. He questions our devotion to
"the cult of efficiency" and suggests that delay and deferral can help
us understand what truly matters to us. Being attentive to our
procrastination, Santella writes, means asking, "whether the things the
world wants us to do are really worth doing."
