Procrastination, and the productivity of distraction

Dreading what you want is never conducive to productivity. For much of my life, I have wanted to put out a bound book of my poetry. Now I have that chance, albeit on a small scale (everyone starts somewhere) and the proofs are just sitting there. Admittedly, I’ve been busy. But now is the time to push myself to do it. One of Warren Buffett's principles, as noted by the reliable source of a sign on the wall at Jimmy Johns (which I had ample time to view while working there) is 'no thumb-twiddling.' I agree. Once you’ve made up your mind, act on your decision, without pausing to dread the work involved. It’s an approach to life that results in more productivity and less dread. Procrastination is one of several self-imposed forms of misery; people laugh about it, but as a veteran procrastinator, I know what despair and desperation can result! This does not mean that I commit to never engaging in it again- no, it is an exceptional source of what may be called the 'productivity of distraction.' Things such as cleaning the house, writing poetry, and, yes, blogging, instead of the form of productivity you are distracting yourself from. It does, however, mean that I am trying to make the productivity of distraction a rational choice, rather than a default mode of life. Now, on to editing those proofs.

As a writer- reflections on lazy writing

As a writer, you have to ask yourself, ‘What am I trying to say? And how can I put my ideas into sentences, following one after another, in a way that will take my reader’s hand and lead them to a conclusion- to a realization- that comes to them with a greater level of clarity than I myself experienced at the first blush of epiphany?’ Good writing is limpid, lucid, and as light as a sash in the wind. It does not settle on the floor of the reader’s mind and require muddling through, like an unwieldy mass of covers in the morning. It is not intellectualism, it is transparent transmission of ideas that floats from one mind to the other. It is written as accessible- as well, as clearly- as possible, so that it is nearly effortless. In looking over this blog so far, I have realized I have used a muddle of words. Initially, my self-justification was, ‘these are just the raw stuff of what comes out of my head, I can’t spend too much time editing it, that is what my manuscripts are for.’ But this is an excuse for lazy writing. Run-on sentences and unnecessarily long words are short-cuts many intellectuals, or would-be intellectuals (including myself) use to express themselves more swiftly. But they are also lazy, both as writing and as thinking. They sacrifice clarity, not for the sake of brevity, compression, or precision- not for the sake of making one’s thought accessible- but for the sake of thinking less. Which is another way of saying, editing less. Writing is thinking, and spending more time going over one can improve the other. That is, if you know how to edit! So, this shall be my test.

The two great crises, and the well-springs of yearning and wonder

In human life, there are two great crises that we all experience, and we take their formative roles upon us- and the psyche of loss that they bring about- for granted precisely because they are universal. These two crises are birth- the loss of the physical parallel to Eden that is the womb (as indicated by Carl Sagan in Broca’s Brain, if I remember correctly)- and the loss of innocence, the loss of the state of mind that is Eden's other parallel. Between the two, we have a sense of yearning, of loss, of not being at peace or whole, that is the unconscious undercurrent of much of our lives. We are rarely aware of it, but this sense of missing something, of being incomplete, is the motivation behind many of our reflections, expressions, beliefs, and yearnings. It is also the source of wonder, which is the fundamental impulse behind philosophical thought and religious feeling alike. It is hard to look at the world through new eyes if they have not lost an older view, an older way of seeing.

Motivations of creativity and self-expression

In the Renaissance, melancholy was associated with creativity, with genius. And rightly so. Democritus may have been a laughing philosopher, but he was one of the exceptions. Intellectual endeavor is a form of creativity too, after all. And among the artists, the writers, so many were sad people, and led sad lives. Heraclitus is a famous example of melancholy among philosophers. It is not an observation unique to me, but melancholy among writers and artists is often a layer beneath hedonism, and a layer above dissatisfaction, and the self-questioning of self-doubt.

People inclined to sustained expression in a disciplined form, whether intellectual or aesthetic, tend to be unfulfilled, meaning-hungry. They make things that mean something because they are working through their sense of futility, meaninglessness- trying to make an elusive meaning manifest- or convince themselves that meaning is not elusive, by trumpeting the illusion that there is one that exists apart from our fallacies and inconsistences, objective and lasting.

But the question of meaning- of seeking it, or dissatisfaction with its fleeting moments, and its fleeting from moments formerly whole and satisfying in themselves- this is fundamental to the drive for expression, whether personal or epic, academic or transcendental. There is this sense of trying to hold onto time: what we love within it, what we want to remember (the two are not always the same), what we want others to remember through the lens of what we have made.