In at the Deep End, And Some Footnotes on Procrastination

Sometimes inspiration can be found in the strangest places. I woke up this morning, made a sharp black coffee, packed my swimming gear and headed to the pool. I paid my francs, marched myself to the deep end, goggled up and jumped in feet first.

Once in the water, the inevitable happened: I was happy as a clam and I didn't want to get out. I put in 2 kilometers, and thanks to a synco swim team practicing in the adjacent pool, was treated to an upbeat underwater soundtrack as I paddled. While Gloria Estefan and Prince would not be my first choice of music to swim to, a remixed version of The Rhythm is Going to Get You helped me pick things up in the last 300 meters. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that during the daytime, the public swim lanes of this particular pool are largely empty (unlike my local pool in Vancouver: located in a downtown neighborhood called The West End, a pretty collection of pink midrise apartment buildings where everybody's grandmother lives, you need to be prepared to swim with a lot of silverbacks if you want to swim during the dayshift. I might add that these silverbacks were often faster than me in the water).

So, it turns out that I have been suffering from nothing more than some garden-variety procrastination about getting back in the pool. But what had me finally take the plunge when I have put off doing it for the better part of a month? I quite simply told myself that if the German government can muster the political will to tell their people it's time to dramatically reduce their meat consumption (see my previous post), I can get my toushy to the pool and swim a few kilometers.

Having broken the seal, I came home and cleaned the fridge, scraped the candle wax off the windowsills, made peanut butter cookies, organized my sock drawer, set up a miniature sprout garden in the kitchen (from a grow-your-own-sprouts starter pack I picked up a few weeks ago) and sent Michael an irritating series of 'can you remember to...' emails at the office. And all this before lunchtime.

Having settled down to eat cookies and write about my morning, I took a moment to reflect on the nature of procrastination, with a little help from Wikipedia:

Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. For a behavior to be classified as procrastination, it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.

Wikipedia got that much right, but it doesn't take a stab at addressing why we procrastinate. What is behind this curious self-suffering that we enter into, especially when it relates to an activity which, once underway, we know we will find some enjoyment in?

Psychology Today, a website with the comforting subtitle of Here to Help, takes a stab at it:

Procrastination represents a profound problem of self-regulation...it is not a problem of time management or of planning...procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don't take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions, such as fear of failure.

Eek. While I wouldn't have described myself as a chronic procrastinator, I am a chronic email-checker. But this is a little more introspection than I was looking for over my tea and cookies, so I am going to enforce a modicum of self-regulation by closing my inbox and finishing the design of my training schedule, which will include regular swimming, for February.