I’m in the car. I’m driving back from my son’s football training or was it from the supermarket? I’m chatting to my friend on hands-free. She says she’s trying to make a decision but she’s procrastinating. 

She criticises herself for being the Queen of Procrastination. 

‘No, no that would be me’, I argue.

‘No’, she says, ‘I’m way worse than you’.

‘Seriously,’ I insist. ‘I could procrastinate for Ireland’.

We argue good-naturedly about which one of us is worse. 

Who gets to wear the procrastinator’s Blue Peter badge?

I remember hearing a psychologist on the radio talking about this.

‘Did you hear him?’ I ask her. ‘He said… and I quote: ’We procrastinate for years and make a decision on a whim…’

Profound or what?

My friend is strangely quiet. She’s thinking about how true the psychologist’s words are, I am sure.

Then I hear a giggle, which turns to a snort to a laugh to a guffaw. What did I say that was so funny?

She catches her breath for a moment and, between giggles, manages to say: ‘I heard that… I heard him. He’s not a psychologist, you eejit. That was an Ad on the radio…’

‘An Ad?’ I ask her, a little confused. 'You mean, an advertisement?’

‘Yes. For a car: “We procrastinate for years and make a decision on a whim”. You heard an actor’s voice on a radio Ad for a car…I think it was for a Toyota Corolla…’

It was my turn to giggle and snort and laugh and guffaw. She was one hundred percent right. It wasn’t a psychologist I had heard. It was a radio advertisement for a bloomin’ car!

And you know what? After we stopped laughing, we agreed this meant we are not so unusual after all. If procrastination is part of a marketing campaign to sell cars, then we are not the only ones. It means pro-cras-tin-ation is a very human trait.

‘We procrastinate for years and make a decision on a whim’.

All of us.

We humans.

We wonderfully flawed, moody, loving, angry, conflicted, hurting, procrastinating, decision-making-on-a-whim human beings.

Lessons learnt?

1. We are not alone.

And…

2. A good laugh is a wonderful lift for the heart and the soul.

SWM x

A Moodscope member