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