Well-researched...[Soon] argues that in many cases eminent figures have done great work while
putting off work they were supposed to be doing. Procrastination might for some people be
part of innovation and the creative process. - Wall Street Journal A fun and erudite
celebration of procrastination An entertaining fact-filled defense of the nearly universal
tendency to procrastinate drawing on the stories of history's greatest delayers and on the
work of psychologists philosophers and behavioral economists to explain why we put off what
we're supposed to be doing and why we shouldn't feel so bad about it. Like so many of us
including most of America's workforce and nearly two-thirds of all university students Andrew
Santella procrastinates. Concerned about his habit but not quite ready to give it up he set
out to learn all he could about the human tendency to delay. He studied history's greatest
procrastinators to gain insights into human behavior and also he writes to kill time
research being the best way to avoid real work. He talked with psychologists philosophers and
priests. He visited New Orleans' French Quarter home to a shrine to the patron saint of
procrastinators. And at the home of Charles Darwin outside London he learned why the great
naturalist delayed writing his masterwork for more than two decades. Drawing on an eclectic mix
of historical case studies in procrastination-from Leonardo da Vinci to Frank Lloyd Wright and
from Old Testament prophets to Civil War generals-Santella offers a sympathetic take on
habitual postponement. He questions our devotion to the cult of efficiency and suggests that
delay and deferral can help us understand what truly matters to us. Being attentive to our
procrastination Santella writes means asking whether the things the world wants us to do are
really worth doing.
