Yesterday we had a very enjoyable day. We “got out of Dodge” with our best friends, traveling to the Gold Country, the region of beautiful foothills where much of the great California Gold Rush played out.
Like us, our friends have two children. Their youngest daughter, a high school junior, was at home yesterday. When I casually asked, “What is she up to today?” we ended up having a great discussion about procrastination.
You see, my friends’ daughters take divergent approaches to writing projects. The oldest employs a very methodical approach, planning what she is going to write far ahead of time, creating an outline and, in the case of a large project with numerous components, gathering and organizing all of the information she needs before finally sitting down to start the process of writing. That process begins and is concluded well in advance of the project’s actual due date. She does not work well under the stress of a looming deadline.
The youngest daughter has a specific project coming due in several weeks, but no other deadlines bearing down on her at this time. Her older sister lent her advice and guidance about how to organize her work in order to finish by the due date, so my friends left her at home yesterday with instructions to spend the day completing her household chores and writing.
Given that I’ve known the girls their whole lives, I asked, “And how much writing do you think she will actually have done by the time you get home?”
The response? “None.”