Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Procrastination
Some familiar words were spoken last night, "we really must hang those lampshades this week". One or the other of us has been saying them regularly for quite some time. As we reflected, it dawned on us that we'd started putting this job off because it was dark by the time we got home from work and the electricity needed to be turned off to do it, so they had to be hung at the weekend. Now we're saying: "we really must hang those lampshades before it gets too dark in the evenings again" (gets dark at 9pm at the moment). How much longer have we spent discussing this than we would have needed to hang the lampshades?
It's an old problem; In my last flat, a door handle dropped off in my room. Easy, I thought - slot it back in and keep using it. Then the door handle fell out on the wrong side. No problem! A screwdriver slots beautifully into the hole and opens the door. Then a sudden thought - if I just fix the door handle with the screwdriver... Less than a minute later, I felt very daft that it had taken 6 months.
My brother, T, learned this lesson far more harshly. He lived in a shared four floor house and they'd been using the basement bathroom door with a screwdriver for months - there wasn't a handle when they moved in. One day, after everyone else had gone out, T found himself in the bathroom with no screwdriver, a closed door and, as he put it, "only a towel, not even a phone!" I'd give anything to have seen him trying to climb out of the window and shin up the side of the house to the first floor window in his towel.
What do you reckon the record is for procrastinating something so quick and simple?
It's an old problem; In my last flat, a door handle dropped off in my room. Easy, I thought - slot it back in and keep using it. Then the door handle fell out on the wrong side. No problem! A screwdriver slots beautifully into the hole and opens the door. Then a sudden thought - if I just fix the door handle with the screwdriver... Less than a minute later, I felt very daft that it had taken 6 months.
My brother, T, learned this lesson far more harshly. He lived in a shared four floor house and they'd been using the basement bathroom door with a screwdriver for months - there wasn't a handle when they moved in. One day, after everyone else had gone out, T found himself in the bathroom with no screwdriver, a closed door and, as he put it, "only a towel, not even a phone!" I'd give anything to have seen him trying to climb out of the window and shin up the side of the house to the first floor window in his towel.
What do you reckon the record is for procrastinating something so quick and simple?
# posted by Liz @ 6:28 pm 
