good procrastination

I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways people manage (or don't manage) time, and why they choose to manage it the way they do. The inspiration for this post was this essay by Paul Graham, but the essay is really just one way of thinking through several concepts I've been mulling over lately.

I should back up here and explain that my current pet project is examining ways in which 18th-century writers envisioned various kinds of futures for individuals and for the British nation. I'm especially interested in narratives and tracts about education, various versions of utopia, exploration and imagination of various kinds of new spaces, economic speculation and credit, and rejections and reaffirmations of the past (in gothic literature, e.g.). I want to tease out the relationship between the different meanings of the word "plot" (the active creation of an alternate future, a path already worn by a work of fiction, a site in which living things can grow) and the imagined relationship between what one reads and what one can become. I am also interested in the optimism surrounding 18th-century "projects," whether they were scientific (including narratives about trips to the moon!) or social (like Sarah Scott's all-female Millennium Hall, which imagined a self-contained charitable society created and perpetuated by intelligent women).

I'm not really sure where this interest originated. I wrote a paper about the use of the word "plot" in Pamela that later became my master's thesis. My interest in this type of topic started before that, though. I've always been fascinated by the idea that, under perfect conditions, someone could make themselves into whatever they wanted to be. (Maybe I am related to John Locke!) I'm a sucker for the kind of resolution that promises that in just an hour a day you could be almost anything . . . a novelist, an Olympic ice skater, a master pianist, or whatever you wanted. I'll confess that I'm mildly addicted to the MTV show Made. The idea that you could mold yourself into whatever type of person you want to be is incredibly appealing to me, even if I know that in practice this idea is fraught with so many complications that it's virtually impossible. For someone to be truly "made" like this she would have to be willing (and able, especially financially speaking) to drop everything else. She would have to be immune to everyday demands--you can't remake yourself while fixing the car or taking care of a small child.

Which brings me to my problems with the essay I linked to. If "good" procrastination requires dropping the everyday things ("errands"), then there must be very few people who can be good procrastinators like this, or who can let their delight in working on important projects run their lives. I'm all for having, as Barbara Kingsolver writes, "dust bisons" in your living room, but I don't think most people have the opportunity or funds to drop, say, grocery shopping in favor of spending more time on a project. This is, I think, an especially difficult negotiation for women, even if you don't think of their lives in terms of a simple work/home division. Women are expected to do good in the world but also made to feel inept if they don't also help people around them (whether it's family or friends) feel comfortable and happy. (This is a huge generalization, I realize, but I think there's something to it.)

Frances Burney, an eighteenth-century novelist who I'm always reading, was especially good at illuminating this kind of tension. Her female protagonists are often expected to do at least two things at once--and be at least two kinds of people simultaneously--and the pressure eventually makes them crack. Camilla, for example, is expected to be open and reserved, and is chided for not being both at the same time. More relevant to this discussion, Cecilia wants to be both a good wife and a good benefactress, only to discover eventually (after losing most of her fortune) that it's impossible to do both. All of her money and time must go to one thing; she can only choose one future. She can be "made" into a wife or into a charitable worker, but not both. Burney even questions the idea that this choice is hers to make.

I'm not really sure what to conclude here. While the idea of a "good procrastination" is appealing (and is, for example, how I'm justifying writing this post now instead of writing headnotes for my "visions of the future" exam list), I don't know if I can subscribe to Paul Graham's version of good procrastination. Maybe I can agree with it if we discuss it in terms of work alone (i.e., I agree that it's better to work on important projects than less important ones), but the discussion gets much more thorny when the "to-do list" Graham dismisses as "bad procrastination" includes tasks essential to maintaining health and happy relationships. I think there's room somewhere for a much more flexible definition of how our use of time shapes who we are, and for an investigation of how much discretion we have in using our time in the first place. (Most people, I'd wager, don't have the freedom to procrastinate in this way, or to choose what work they do.)