099 - Procrastinate Like a Pro

Experience life on Idler's Isle.

Do you ever have things you have to do but you don’t do them? Or tasks that should be completed today that you put off until tomorrow? Probably not. For most cultures around the world, that would be considered ‘crazy.’ But on Idler’s Isle, procrastination isn’t just commonplace, it’s our culture.

Except for the last 99 days, I have spent my entire life living and “working” on Idler’s Isle. I was born there, and today I am a proud citizen of the Procrasti Nation.

As a child, adolescent, college student, young adult, and even 30-year-old, I did very little with my life, like my father and his father before him. I was taught to procrastinate and flounder; to dawdle, dally, and delay… even when it came to the inevitable.

I would spend countless days meandering through my beautiful yet underdeveloped homeland – a small island in the Non-sPacific Ocean, off the coast of the languid nation of Procrasti.

Archipelago of Anxiousness, Butte Stuff, Cape of No Hope, Chore Forrest, Coast of Loooooonnnnggg Convos, Delta of Dilly-Dally, Dithering Ditch, Do Little Drainage Basin, Endless Scroll Waterfall, Getting Nothing Dune, Glacier of Frozen Ambition, Google Geyser, Gorge of Snacks, Harbor of Resentments, Iceberg of Isolation, Isthmus of Inundation, Knoll of Nothing, Lake of Low Priority Tasks, Loser Lagoon, Meditation Meadow, Mental Health Marshes, Mesa of Meander, Overthinking Oasis, Peninsula of Procrastination, Plateau of Potential, River of Regret, Sound of Spotify, Stream of Consciousness, Tidal Wave of To-dos, Unattainable Peak, & Wasteland, illustrated by Pauline de Roussy de Sales.

Let me take you through a typical day in the life of an Idler's Islander:

I wake up in the Cape of No Hope around noon and then roll down to the Isthmus of Inundation to experience crippling levels of overwhelm around everything that I have to do, that I want to do, that would be nice to do, that I might do, and that I’ll never do. Then I’ll spend the majority of every day at the Get Nothing Dune, staring at a blank page.

If I can cross the Gorge of Snacks without taking a nap, I might spend a minute splashing in the Lake of Low Priority Tasks, moving around books on the shelves there to organize them by color or by author (whichever one they currently aren’t).

I won’t even give the Unattainable Peak a passing glance as I saunter back to the Loser Lagoon, where all my friends are. We’ll sit beneath (far beneath) the Plateau of Potential. There, we’ll spend hours making vague plans for the distant future, which we might as well shove deep into the bowels of the nearby hill we call Butte Stuff.

I’m pretty wiped out by that point, plus it’ll be too late in the day to even think of starting anything, so I’ll go lie face down in the Overthinking Oasis. Once I’m sure I’ve overthought everything, I’ll crawl over to the Iceberg of Isolation where I’ll dream of nothing and sleep off another wasted day, as the iceberg drifts back over to the Cape of No Hope, where I can start my day anew.

It’s not all as unproductive as it seems. The Stream of Consciousness can be quite fruitful, though it always leads to the River of Regret (almost everything does). There used to be a Pond of Productive Procrastination but that dried up a while ago. Now it’s just a wasteland we call Wasteland (unnamed due to laziness).

There are many other things to do and see in my homeland… and I’ll get to them eventually. But like I always say, “why do something today that can be done tomorrow? And why do something tomorrow when it can be done the day after that?”

Anyway, I hope you’ll come visit. You know where to find me.