I think all of us probably struggle with a bit of procrastination from time to time. It’s when you put off doing something, usually work, by doing something else. Like spending hours creating a colour-coded revision plan meaning there’s no time left for revision (I definitely did that). Or spending three hours scrolling through food blogs to find a super-healthy recipe leaving no time to go to Tesco so you have to order a pizza (yup, also me). Ironically, this word that describes the act of avoiding work actually has a very hard-working linguistic history.
This is an AI-generated image, which should be obvious from the fact that it looks like the man has eaten a third of his cup. I apologise for using AI, which I hate, but posts with images are usually more popular, and I couldn’t find anything on Unsplash for ‘procrastination’.
‘Procrastination’ entered the English language in the mid-16th century from the Latin procrastinationem. It’s made of three parts:
the prefix pro-, meaning ‘forward’ or ‘forth’
crastinus, meaning ‘belonging to tomorrow’ (from cras, the Latin word for, you’ve guessed it, ‘tomorrow’)
-ation, a standard suffix that turns a verb into a noun describing an action or process.
Put it all together, and you get, literally: ‘The action of putting forward until tomorrow.’
Procrastination isn’t always the bane of creativity. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci was the patron saint of unfinished projects, taking 16 years to finish the Mona Lisa. The good news is that he didn’t just sit around colour coding his paintbrushes or scrolling through the renaissance equivalent of TikTok. He ‘productively procrastinated’ by studying (among others) optics, light and human anatomy. And that meant that when he finally returned to the painting, he’d mastered a technique called sfumato (smoky blurring) that he hadn’t been able to do previously. So if he’d actually finished the enigmatic painting on time, it likely wouldn’t be the masterpiece it is today.
Another notorious historical procrastinator was Queen Elizabeth I, who apparently drove her advisors nuts taking her time over signing death warrants and marriage treaties. The good news is that by procrastinating on executing Mary, Queen of Scots for nearly 20 years, Lizzie avoided a premature war with Catholic Europe. By the time she finally did sign the warrant in 1587, England was militarily stronger and better prepared for the eventual Spanish Armada. So that procrastination kept England out of a potentially bloody – and expensive – conflict that could have gone on for decades. Oh, and by not choosing a husband, Liz made sure every country in Europe was concentrating on getting in her pants rather than on invading her queendom.
So next time you find yourself doing anything but the thing you’re supposed to be doing, fret not – you’re not being lazy, you’re just applying Elizabethan diplomacy.