Speaker 1: Guess what will what's that mango? So I think you
Speaker 1: know I'm a procrastinator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know that at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the sort of person who always does my
Speaker 1: research immediately or like buy supplies ahead of time because
Speaker 1: I like to be prepared. And then traditionally I tend
Speaker 1: to wait till the last minute to write my essays
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Actually, I liked that story you told me about how
Speaker 2: your parents kind of conditioned you to become a procrastinator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when I was a kid, for like book
Speaker 1: reports or diramas or whatever, like, it was always the same.
Speaker 1: I just wait till the last minute, and then my
Speaker 1: parents would stay up with me, and since I was up,
Speaker 1: they'd make or order pizza. And then I'd be like
Speaker 1: nine or nine thirty and like Mystery was on PBS,
Speaker 1: so we'd stay up to watch the Sherlock Holmes with
Speaker 1: my mom, and you know, since I was up, they'd
Speaker 1: also like open a box of ice cream and we
Speaker 1: eat that together. And then in the morning, like my
Speaker 1: little sister would wake up and see a pizza box
Speaker 1: and an ice cream carton and be like, you had
Speaker 1: another party without me.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I both hate that I'm a procrastinator
Speaker 1: and I really love staying up late and sort of
Speaker 1: that thrill of rushing to a deadline and Metal Floss
Speaker 1: used to feel like that to me. We'd rushed to
Speaker 1: close an issue of the magazine and it was just
Speaker 1: so fun.
Speaker 2: But I'm curious.
Speaker 1: About procrastination, like what makes us do it? Why do
Speaker 1: we brag about it? And who are the greatest procrastinators
Speaker 1: in history? And that's what we're gonna find out today.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind that soundproof glass
Speaker 2: with a bottle of Nodos, a stack of bullet journals.
Speaker 2: What is that a i'madoro timer and a pair of blinders.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy is so serious about never losing
Speaker 2: his focus. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: I know Tristan loves to hit deadlines.
Speaker 2: He is ruthless about not procrastinating. But you know, speaking
Speaker 2: of procrastination, we've got Andrew Santella on the program.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Andrew's the author of a wonderful new book. It's called Soon,
Speaker 2: An Overdue History of Procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to
Speaker 2: you and me. Welcome to part time genius Andrew.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's get right to it. And you've
Speaker 2: said you wrote this book on procrastination not to end
Speaker 2: your habit, but actually to excuse it, which is pretty wonderful.
Speaker 2: So can you tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 2: you decided to write this book and where the idea
Speaker 2: came about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was motivated almost entirely by self interest. I
Speaker 3: knew I had this like long procrastination habit, and I
Speaker 3: thought if I dove deep enough into the history of
Speaker 3: the thing, I might find some little curve of information
Speaker 3: that would justify my habit, that would excuse it and
Speaker 3: make me feel a little less bad about it.
Speaker 1: So I think you're read that twenty percent of us
Speaker 1: are chronic procrastinators, and I think it's like a third
Speaker 1: of college students identify as procrastinators. And I was curious,
Speaker 1: why do you think it is that people just love
Speaker 1: to brag about being procrastinators?
Speaker 3: That is one of the most fascinating phenomenon connected to procrastination.
Speaker 3: If you ask me, when I would tell people I
Speaker 3: was working on a book about procrastination, almost always the
Speaker 3: response would be, oh, that's the book for me. I'm
Speaker 3: the world's worst procrastinator, or I'm a terrible procrastinator. I've
Speaker 3: got to read that book. And I was noticing, like
Speaker 3: all the language was very judgmental, terrible and the worst,
Speaker 3: all those sorts of characterizations. So people were clearly ashamed
Speaker 3: about their habit, but they're also bragging to me. So
Speaker 3: there was this weird sort of perverse pride in their
Speaker 3: in their in their terrible habits. And I recognize that
Speaker 3: in myself. I think even people who aren't such bad
Speaker 3: procrastinators want to call themselves really bad procrastinators. And and
Speaker 3: I think we've been really conditioned to to feel bad
Speaker 3: every time we aren't at our most efficient. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a strange thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a strange thing. And so so we
Speaker 2: should definitely get to the cure here, though, So can
Speaker 2: you talk to us about Saint Expedite.
Speaker 3: So the quick Lives of the Saints version is that
Speaker 3: he was supposed to have been a Roman centurion in
Speaker 3: the fourth century who was not a man of faith,
Speaker 3: but one day decided to accept the Christian faith. But
Speaker 3: he was visited, and this is the really good part here.
Speaker 3: He was visited by a talking crow. And I know
Speaker 3: we've all been there, the talking crows that they him,
Speaker 3: you know, Expedite, just why don't want to hold on
Speaker 3: a second? Uh? No, rush, Why don't you think about
Speaker 3: it before you dive into this and make sure you're
Speaker 3: doing the right thing. You can always do it tomorrow.
Speaker 3: And Expedite, tempted as he was by the by the
Speaker 3: opportunity to put off his conversion, decided that no, this
Speaker 3: was the devil talking through the crow, and he actually
Speaker 3: killed the crow. He stopped the crow to death. According
Speaker 3: to legend, when you see a statue of Saint Expedite,
Speaker 3: now he's almost always shown in his Roman centurion outfit
Speaker 3: stepping on a crow, and you know at his feet
Speaker 3: there's a dead there's a dead crow breathing his last
Speaker 3: and I know it's gruesome. Expertite a banner that says Jodier,
Speaker 3: which is the Latin word for today. So he is
Speaker 3: this emblem of promptness and certitude. The real interesting thing
Speaker 3: about that story, though, for me, is that it is
Speaker 3: just a story. It's almost universally agreed that, you know,
Speaker 3: he's a legend. His story might be based on many
Speaker 3: characters or something like that, but there was no historical
Speaker 3: Saint Expedite. And that's really to me because it's like,
Speaker 3: only only a only a fictional character could be that
Speaker 3: prompt and that for the rest of us, the rest
Speaker 3: of us, actual human beings, you know, we have to
Speaker 3: wrestle with our procrastination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Sant Expedite sounds fictional, but that talking crove,
Speaker 1: it really sold me on the.
Speaker 3: You think, like with a detail like that, it's got
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: True, definitely. But one of the things I'm s curious
Speaker 1: about is how he's worshiped on Reunion Island. Would you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, in various places around the world, there's you know,
Speaker 3: a pretty flourishing sort of devotional cult that you know
Speaker 3: still you know, sees Expedite and other saints as sort
Speaker 3: of mediators. When people need help, they will you know,
Speaker 3: ask to intercede on their behalf. In Brazil, the feast
Speaker 3: day of Saint Expedite, which is coming up, I think
Speaker 3: it's a pull nineteenth I'm remember any right. The feast
Speaker 3: day of Saint Expedite is really a big deal. I mean,
Speaker 3: a lot of the the churches are filled with people,
Speaker 3: and this Reunion Island is another place where where that
Speaker 3: devotion exists. People that build roadside shrines to Expedite leave
Speaker 3: the little innecessary prayers for him, asking for his help
Speaker 3: with certain problems. And if they get his help and
Speaker 3: they get help with the problem, they leave him some uh,
Speaker 3: you know, some treat and if they don't, they're supposed
Speaker 3: to lop off the head of the statue, And which
Speaker 3: explains why there's a lot of headless Expedite statues.
Speaker 1: I love that so much.
Speaker 3: In the United States, there's pretty much the only place
Speaker 3: where that sort of devotion is still practices in the
Speaker 3: area around New Orleans. There's a church, Our Lady of
Speaker 3: Guadalupe Church, just outside the French Quarter on Rampart Street,
Speaker 3: where there's a statue of Seeing Expedite, And I went
Speaker 3: to visit, and I saw from my own eye is
Speaker 3: little bits of paper left at the foot of his
Speaker 3: statue intercessory prayers that people had scribbled out asking for
Speaker 3: his help with this or with that. And the local
Speaker 3: tradition is that You're supposed to leave a piece of
Speaker 3: pound cake for expedite As as a sort of token
Speaker 3: of your good, good, good faith, and I didn't. When
Speaker 3: the day I visited, I didn't see any pound cake,
Speaker 3: and the church was kind of dark and deserted, and
Speaker 3: it was a little spooky in there, and I was thinking, Jesus,
Speaker 3: that did he actually consume the pound cake? There was
Speaker 3: no pound cake because Father Tony, who's the parish priest,
Speaker 3: regularly cleans up and you know, collects the pound cake
Speaker 3: and puts it to good use. So that was there
Speaker 3: was there was a non supernatural explanation for that.
Speaker 2: I like, puts it to good use. I mean, pound
Speaker 2: cake is pretty delicious, so I have a feeling I
Speaker 2: know what Father Tony is doing.
Speaker 1: And had one more question about that though you you
Speaker 1: made more than one trip to Saint Expedite, right, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the first trip.
Speaker 3: I'm not. I'm a little ashamed of that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it's true. I went down with a friend who knew
Speaker 3: that if he didn't accompany me, I would never get
Speaker 3: down to New Orleans. I mean, I told him I
Speaker 3: should really get down to New Orleans for this book
Speaker 3: I'm writing and there's there's something down there I should
Speaker 3: see it, like a really great chapter. And you know,
Speaker 3: he knows me well enough. He's an old friend. He
Speaker 3: knows me well enough that he knew I would down
Speaker 3: there left to my own devices. So he insisted that
Speaker 3: we go together. And he got on the plane with me,
Speaker 3: and we went down to New Orleans and spent I
Speaker 3: think two days down there. And I did not a
Speaker 3: single bit of research on saying it. But I during
Speaker 3: the two days I was in New Orleans, you know,
Speaker 3: I just there was a lot of other things to
Speaker 3: do in New Orleans. It's a very it's a very
Speaker 3: fun city. So I had to go back a second time.
Speaker 3: I was really a shamed of myself that I had
Speaker 3: to go back a second time, this time by myself.
Speaker 3: And I actually did talk to father Tony and some
Speaker 3: other people about extra today.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's move from talking about somebody who
Speaker 2: was legendary to some very real people in history, some
Speaker 2: famous procrastinators. But before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 2: a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius were
Speaker 2: joined by andrewsen Tella, the author of the book Soon,
Speaker 2: An Overdue History of Procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to
Speaker 2: you and me, why don't we move from someone who
Speaker 2: may have been legend to some true famous procrastinators. So
Speaker 2: can we talk a little bit about Charles Darwin?
Speaker 1: First?
Speaker 3: Darwin is probably the favorite of all the sort of
Speaker 3: historical figures that I encountered in working on the book.
Speaker 3: I really came to be fond of him, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I always knew what an important figure he
Speaker 3: was and what a genius he was, But he also
Speaker 3: is a just seems to have been a really devoted
Speaker 3: family guy and a sort of an odd bird in
Speaker 3: a really charming way. The fact is, it took him
Speaker 3: more than two decades from the time when he sort
Speaker 3: of developed the germ of the idea that is at
Speaker 3: the heart of natural selection and wrote up sort of
Speaker 3: that foundational idea in his private notebooks. It took him
Speaker 3: more than two decades from that point to the point
Speaker 3: where he actually published the landmark book on the Origin
Speaker 3: of species. And you know, I understand that science takes time.
Speaker 3: The fact is, during those two and a half decades,
Speaker 3: he did a lot of things that in retrospect seemed
Speaker 3: like maybe not great uses of his time. And I
Speaker 3: think he did those things well, like, for example, he
Speaker 3: edited gardening magazine. He did voluminous research on earth worms.
Speaker 3: He did he became obsessed with barnacles. He had barnacles
Speaker 3: all over his house and you know, pickled in jars,
Speaker 3: and he was dissecting them and examining them and comparing
Speaker 3: different categories and parnicles. He was just, by his own admission,
Speaker 3: obsessed with things, to the point where his kids grew
Speaker 3: up thinking like everyone lived like this with barnacles all
Speaker 3: of the house. When one of Darwin's boys went to
Speaker 3: visit a friend at a friend's house, he looked around
Speaker 3: and said, well, where does your father do his barnacles?
Speaker 3: He thought everyone had you had a study full of parnicles. So,
Speaker 3: you know, you wonder why was he not just plugging
Speaker 3: away on this book that he must have known would
Speaker 3: shake the world to its core, and instead was spending
Speaker 3: his time with worms, you know, And I think he
Speaker 3: was ambivalent about the work he was doing in some ways.
Speaker 3: You know, he was the product of a very devout
Speaker 3: father who wanted him to go into the ministry, and
Speaker 3: you know, I think that background made him feel especially
Speaker 3: u leery of undertaking this work that he knew would
Speaker 3: displace God in the worldview of many, and so I
Speaker 3: think there were a lot of reasons why he was
Speaker 3: ambivalent about his work, and so I think that resulted
Speaker 3: in these detours that seem odd to us. And even
Speaker 3: if even for Darwin he admitted I think I might
Speaker 3: have spent might I might have spent a little bit
Speaker 3: too long on those parnaicles that I read. But I
Speaker 3: think one of the things that's really interesting, though, is
Speaker 3: that he learned things from those detours that ended up
Speaker 3: informing his work on natural selection. Natural selection is all
Speaker 3: about small incremental changes that lead to large consequences, and
Speaker 3: earth worms really demonstrate that, and Darwin recognized that what
Speaker 3: he learned from the Barnacles informed his work at natural selection.
Speaker 3: And so I think his story is illustrative of how
Speaker 3: even the detours sometimes can lead us to some important understanding.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the interesting things about procrastination, too,
Speaker 3: is that there's a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 3: ways to get to understanding well.
Speaker 1: I think one of the other things that's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is that, and you point this out, is that
Speaker 1: there are so many ways to procrastinate, right, like from
Speaker 1: like obsessing over little things that aren't important to like
Speaker 1: doing important things, but you know, things that aren't important
Speaker 1: right now, like and in analyzing profestinating, like, did you
Speaker 1: find that you're more prone to anyone type or that
Speaker 1: people tend to gravitate to one type?
Speaker 3: You know, I recognize and everyone, you know, people who
Speaker 3: study this phenomenon sort of for a living, you know,
Speaker 3: recognize that you could be really diligent in certain things
Speaker 3: in your life, about the housework or paying bills, and
Speaker 3: but a complete procrastinating slacker about other parts of you,
Speaker 3: like maybe your work deadlines or something like that, or
Speaker 3: or it could be in reverse. So yes, there's I
Speaker 3: think most of us have areas where we're uh diligent
Speaker 3: in one thing and not so in another. And I
Speaker 3: mean that just goes to illustrate how, you know, we're
Speaker 3: all divided selves, and we all have these, uh you know,
Speaker 3: parts of ourselves that that are sort of at war
Speaker 3: with each other, and I think there was all what
Speaker 3: happens when we're trying to resolve those wars is procrastination.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that you note that Aristotle and
Speaker 2: Socrates had different philosophies on procrastination, and this idea of
Speaker 2: there's a word you have in the book I wasn't
Speaker 2: familiar with it. Is it a crazia? How do you
Speaker 2: pronounce the word?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, yeah, So you talk about this idea of aquatia,
Speaker 2: So can can you talk a little bit about this?
Speaker 3: So, yes, you're asking me to unpack ancient Greek philosophy.
Speaker 2: Is that is that if you don't mind, like let's say,
Speaker 2: let's say we give you, you know, five minutes to
Speaker 2: unpack the whole thing. I feel like that's reasonable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the question about a crasia is whether a
Speaker 3: rational person can knowingly do something that's bad for yet
Speaker 3: for her. I mean, I don't think the ancient Greeks
Speaker 3: would have said or her, but I'll add that. So
Speaker 3: in other words, if your rational, why would you do
Speaker 3: something that you know is going to come back to
Speaker 3: bite you and later, like for example, procrastinating. I mean
Speaker 3: that's the definition of procrastination is to put off something
Speaker 3: that needs to be done, knowing that the delay will
Speaker 3: harm you at something will cost you at some point
Speaker 3: in the future. So if you're a rational person, why
Speaker 3: would you, knowing lee do something that will cost you
Speaker 3: in the future. And if you're not rational, well then
Speaker 3: you're not you're not capable of knowing that. So so
Speaker 3: you know, I guess that's the debate.
Speaker 2: All right, we need to take one more quick break,
Speaker 2: but when we come back, I want to talk about
Speaker 2: to do lists. Welcome back to part time genius. I
Speaker 2: want to ask a couple of questions about to do lists.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but I'm definitely a to
Speaker 2: do list maker. I love keeping lists around, and it's
Speaker 2: something that you know, we seem to live in a
Speaker 2: society that's upset with these to do lists. And it
Speaker 2: was funny you actually included Johnny Cash in the mix here.
Speaker 2: So can you talk a little bit about to do
Speaker 2: list and your philosophy around them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My philosophy of to do lists is that they're
Speaker 3: a great way to avoid actually doing the things on
Speaker 3: the to do list.
Speaker 2: That sounds about right.
Speaker 3: I spent so much time actually making the list that
Speaker 3: I find that, you know, and and and I get
Speaker 3: such satisfaction from making the list that I don't really
Speaker 3: feel like I need to do the things on the list.
Speaker 3: The other thing that happens is like I lose my
Speaker 3: list quite a lot, you know, I make so many
Speaker 3: lists over the course of the day, you know, I
Speaker 3: leave them all over the place, and I'll lose them,
Speaker 3: and it's it's funny. They turn up maybe like a
Speaker 3: month later, you know, and they're still perfectly good because
Speaker 3: I haven't done anything.
Speaker 5: So it's there's still there's still a valid and valuable
Speaker 5: I thinks are a dubious value to like actually getting
Speaker 5: things done. Although actually getting things done was is not
Speaker 5: really the topic of interest for me in the book.
Speaker 3: It's not a how to book or a or a
Speaker 3: self help book, but trying to understand why we make
Speaker 3: lists was of interest to me, and I came across
Speaker 3: really interesting stuff from the novelist and CEO Titian Umberdo Echo,
Speaker 3: who wrote at length about lists, and he theorized that
Speaker 3: we make lists because we're afraid to die. Lists are
Speaker 3: sort of a gesture at infinitude, that you can never
Speaker 3: complete a list. There's always more to be added to.
Speaker 4: A list, and and as as a as as an
Speaker 4: emblem of infinitude, they remind us of our by nightness
Speaker 4: and our and our mortality, and so we make lists,
Speaker 4: Echo said, because we're afraid to die.
Speaker 3: I totally buy into that. Idea, I think, I think
Speaker 3: so I basically I feel like anything I do I
Speaker 3: do because I'm afraid to die.
Speaker 1: Well, I do like too that. I think you mentioned
Speaker 1: that a lot of people will put things and I
Speaker 1: do this, like I'll put things on a list just
Speaker 1: to knock it off, And I think I think there
Speaker 1: is some link between that and my being a procrastinator,
Speaker 1: where I think I take a certain amount of pride
Speaker 1: in being able to hit the deadline even though I
Speaker 1: wait such a long time. Like, I think that feeling
Speaker 1: of accomplishment from both things, like somehow ties together. But
Speaker 1: you talk about Frank Lloyd right and how he came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of falling water in just two hours,
Speaker 1: and I really love that story, I think as a procrastinator,
Speaker 1: so I was wondering if you could share that with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think a great way to get that feeling
Speaker 3: of satisfaction of knocking something off the list is to
Speaker 3: write the most the most ridiculous things and the most
Speaker 3: the simplest things down as things to do that day, Like,
Speaker 3: for example, getting up and going to the bathroom would
Speaker 3: be something to put at the top of your list
Speaker 3: and it'd be done, you know, just cross it off
Speaker 3: and you've gotten one of the things off your list.
Speaker 3: That's all right, I know I said, it wasn't a
Speaker 3: subf help, but that's my one protein.
Speaker 2: Go to the bathroom and righte it down.
Speaker 3: Asked about Frank Floyd Wright, So Franklyad Wright was asked
Speaker 3: to design a house outside Pittsburgh by one of his clients,
Speaker 3: and the house became what we know was Falling Water,
Speaker 3: one of the great accomplishments of residential architecture, of course,
Speaker 3: And and this this commission came at a time when
Speaker 3: Wright's reputation was sort of in tatters. He was on
Speaker 3: the outside. This new wave of European Modernists were the
Speaker 3: end thing, and he was definitely a sort of a
Speaker 3: has been, and this commission had the potential to resurrect
Speaker 3: his career. And of course, right did the only thing
Speaker 3: that a procrastinator could do. Given the chance to make
Speaker 3: such a splash, He put it off. He just, having
Speaker 3: gotten the commission, put nothing down on paper for the
Speaker 3: longest time. And it was only when his client called
Speaker 3: and said, Hey, I'm gonna come by the studio tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I'd love to see those drawings you've been working on.
Speaker 3: That right, actually started working on those drawings he was
Speaker 3: supposed to be working on. And so this legend sprung
Speaker 3: up partly, you know, disseminated by his students and his
Speaker 3: sort of his disciples, that he scribbled out his designs
Speaker 3: for this master work, you know, at the very last minute,
Speaker 3: like as his client was waiting in the waiting room,
Speaker 3: he was finishing these these designs for falling Water. And
Speaker 3: I mean, it really could not have happened that way,
Speaker 3: his scholars agree. I mean, he must have had the
Speaker 3: ideas in his head or in some sort of you know,
Speaker 3: partially finished state, and then translated them to paper, you know,
Speaker 3: when he needed to. But it's interesting to me that
Speaker 3: his students wanted to promote this legend of him procrastinating
Speaker 3: and not being diligent, because you wouldn't think that would
Speaker 3: be something to be proud of. You wouldn't think that
Speaker 3: would add to your professional reputation. But in his student's mind,
Speaker 3: it was sort of a proof of what a genius
Speaker 3: he was, that he could I'm almost out demand just
Speaker 3: with about the you know, ideas that would shake architecture
Speaker 3: to its core. And you know, I think so that's
Speaker 3: his story is a lesson in how we sometimes attribute
Speaker 3: genius to or connect procrastination to genius in a sort
Speaker 3: of not entirely valid way.
Speaker 1: So, Andrew, I really love this book. But one of
Speaker 1: the things I noticed, and this isn't a chrism you,
Speaker 1: but you know, it does seem like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of historical examples of women procrastinating. And I was curious,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would recognize that as I was writing,
Speaker 3: And I mean, part of the problem is that, you know,
Speaker 3: women just aren't as well represented in our understanding of
Speaker 3: history as they might be. Our idea of history is,
Speaker 3: at least in the Western world, is sort of monotone.
Speaker 3: And the short answer is, I don't know. I did
Speaker 3: write about Penelope and how I think Penelope was an
Speaker 3: example of a really strategic procrastinator, someone who used procrastination
Speaker 3: to achieve what she wanted to achieve. That is, she
Speaker 3: wanted to remain faithful to her husband. You know, the
Speaker 3: story of hyde Penelope is that she told the suitors
Speaker 3: who wanted to marry her that she would consider them
Speaker 3: only when she finished making this shroud for her father
Speaker 3: in law. You know, her husband had been offered. I
Speaker 3: don't know how long, twenty years, and people assumed that
Speaker 3: he was dead, but she believed that he would eventually
Speaker 3: return to her, and so she didn't want to you
Speaker 3: didn't want to deal with these suitors who wanted to
Speaker 3: take her husband's place. And so every day she would
Speaker 3: work on this shroud that she was supposed to be weaving,
Speaker 3: and every night she would unravel the work done the
Speaker 3: previous day, which I think is a lot of what
Speaker 3: us procrastinators do, sort of metaphorically with our homework. And
Speaker 3: so her unraveling, her postponing, and her you know that
Speaker 3: delay that she employed allowed her to buy time for
Speaker 3: her husband to return.
Speaker 2: All right, sir Andrew, one more question before we let
Speaker 2: you go. You talk a little bit of the book
Speaker 2: about procrastination societies, which I have to be honest, it
Speaker 2: sounds kind of fun. So can you talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, I think procrastination is so widespread and
Speaker 3: people feel so bad about it that it's only natural
Speaker 3: that they've banned together as procrastinators. It's also forming a
Speaker 3: procrastination society seems to be a great occasion for making
Speaker 3: lame jokes about procrastination, so that you know, if you
Speaker 3: if you started a procrastination society, you know, the founding
Speaker 3: date might be some point in the future, or the
Speaker 3: first meeting will be you know, postponed that you know,
Speaker 3: you just run across those sorts of lame jokes all
Speaker 3: the time. I ran across. Well, we talked about Lichtenberg earlier,
Speaker 3: the German Enlightenment scientists. Discovering his story led me to
Speaker 3: a group of people in a small town outside Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 3: who founded a society called the Lichtenbergian Society that honors
Speaker 3: Lichtenberg and his role in promoting procrastination. They're all sort
Speaker 3: of creative, smart people that the teachers and play rights
Speaker 3: and architects, and I think there was a professional clown
Speaker 3: in there too, And they're all inveterate procrastinators who are
Speaker 3: both like so many of us, a shame of their
Speaker 3: habit and proud of their hat of it. And so
Speaker 3: they formed this group and I went down and uh
Speaker 3: and sat in on one of their meetings, which happened
Speaker 3: in the really charming backyard of one of the members house,
Speaker 3: who next to the labyrinth that he built in his backyard.
Speaker 3: He built the labyrinth one summer when he was supposed
Speaker 3: to have been composing an opera, uh and he got
Speaker 3: like nothing done on the opera. He built this really
Speaker 3: cool labyrinth and it's a great place to have a
Speaker 3: have a cocktail and on a nice spring night like
Speaker 3: we did that night. So that looked in Berghian in society.
Speaker 3: If you're looking for a group to join, boy, that's it.
Speaker 3: I recommend that highly.
Speaker 2: We've been talking with Andrew Santella. The book is soon
Speaker 2: an overdue history of procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to
Speaker 2: you and me. Thanks so much for being here, Andrew,
Speaker 2: my pleasure.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
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Speaker 1: Christan McNeil does the editing thing.
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Speaker 1: Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
Speaker 1: Good job, Eves.
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Speaker 1: Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 3: Jason who