Redeeming the Time and Biblical Productivity - Part 2

2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator

In the past I thought that as long as I wasn’t idle, I wasn’t lazy. Not
true. In fact, my laziness often shows up in the form of busyness.

And this was the same discovery Walter Henegar made in his life, as
he explained in his candid autobiographical article “Putting Off
Procrastination” in The Journal of Biblical Counseling (Fall 2001).

“I procrastinate,” he writes. “I’ve been doing it most of my life. If a
particular task is even remotely unpleasant, my first and persistent
tendency is to put it off. It’s not that I’m lazy; I’m actually very busy. I
just wait as long as possible to do the really hard stuff. I always pull it
off in the end, but it regularly makes me miserable” (p. 40).
Here is a glimpse into his life:

When I got married, my uncle, who married us, joked about
my well‐known tendency right in the middle of the ceremony.
His sermon was about the necessity of change in marriage,
and looking right at me, he said, “One who is a
procrastinator…will put that off as long as he can.”
And that’s exactly what I did, though married life made it
increasingly more difficult. My designated crunch times now
belonged to my wife as well, and I had to push her away to get
last‐minute work done.…an’ she just cut me some slack?
She did cut me some slack, but only as much as her chronically
ill body would allow. Repeated hospital stays and constant
bouts with pain forced her to lean heavily on me to take care
of her—nd our two children. If marriage is God’ cold chisel
for sanctifying us, then children only sharpen the edge. The
three of them drove my work responsibilities deeper into my
free time and farther into the hours of the night. I slept less
and less. I still managed to pull most things off, but the quality
of my work suffered, and my list of un‐done to‐do’ grew. I
was continually weary, discouraged, and feeling sorry for
myself. A couple of times, in the throes of last‐minute
working, I even experienced something like panic attacks. I
envied my more disciplined friends but saw little hope of
becoming like them. (pp. 40–1)

As he began studying his heart, Mr. Henegar discovered that his sin
operated from three predictable manifestations of what he calls his
“low chart of if‐thens”:

• If my task is not due anytime soon, put it off.
• If the task is due tomorrow, cast aside all other responsibilities
and focus on this one task.
• And after accomplishing a large task, take a break and reward
yourself.

As he continued to study his own heart, he began to understand that
although his day was filled with busyness—and even with genuinely
good activities—he was procrastinating. “There I was, buzzing
diligently around the room, while that thing, the one thing I needed
to do most, sat unheeded in the middle of it. I wasn’t just a
procrastinator; I was a work‐around‐er”(p. 41).

Then came the decisive point in his life when he learned more about
this procrastinator within.

About two years ago, a counseling class in seminary
challenged me to give Scripture a shot at diagnosing my
problem and setting a course for change. What captured my
imagination was the biblical metaphor of a tree, and the
suggestion that my prickly branches of procrastination were
being nourished by unseen roots growing deep in the
chambers of my heart. A hope even flashed that I might
uncover the root, and somehow cut it out once and for all. In
retrospect, this second hope was a reflection of my
procrastinator’s heart, always looking for a shortcut or a silver
bullet. (p. 41)

But there was no shortcut.

Next time we’ll discover how Mr. Henegar confronted the
procrastinator within.

Click here to get the whole thing.