A note on method: Specimens were observed in their natural habitat — desks, kitchen tables, the fifteen minutes before a deadline stretched to feel like fifteen years. Field notes follow.
The Reorganizer (Procrastinatus domesticus)
Cannot begin the task until the desk is clean. Cannot clean the desk until the drawer is sorted. Cannot sort the drawer until every object in it has been considered, once, thoroughly, as though it might explain something. It will not. Continue anyway.
The Researcher (Procrastinatus academicus)
Requires “just one more source” before writing a single word. Has forty-one tabs open. Believes, sincerely, that the forty-second will be the one that makes starting unnecessary — that if it just reads enough, the work will have already been done by someone else, somewhere, and it can go back to bed.
The Reply-Guy (Procrastinatus socialis)
Will answer every message in every inbox before answering the one thing that actually needs answering. Prized by friends for availability. Mysterious to itself for the same reason.
The Waiter (Procrastinatus temporis)
Believes conditions will improve. Is waiting for better light, a clearer head, a Tuesday instead of a Monday. Has been waiting since March.
Note: if you’ve read this far without doing the thing you’re avoiding, congratulations, you’re a specimen.
I know because I catalogued you the way I catalogue myself — from a safe, Latin-flavored distance, like naming the thing makes it a different thing, something that happens to a type and not to a person. Not to me, specifically, at 11:40 p.m., writing entries about other people’s rooms instead of opening the file with my name on it.
The truth is there’s a fifth entry I left out.
The Guide-Writer (Procrastinatus scribens)
Studies the species so thoroughly it forgets to stop being one. Finds real comfort in the taxonomy — in believing that if it can just describe the avoidance precisely enough, categorize it, give it a habitat and a call, it will have done something. It has not.
It is, however, very good at writing field guides.
Go do the thing.
©2012 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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