What Is Procrastination?

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Creative projects often stall without a meaningful deadline.

One finished project can replace years of unnecessary guilt.

Small actions build momentum better than waiting for motivation.

When my son, Aaron, and daughter-in-law, Lizzie, moved back to Massachusetts in August of 2020, they brought with them their furniture, small appliances, clothes, and a stack of T-shirts. Lizzie had been collecting these wearable mementos since kindergarten. She had bags of them. Each shirt told a story. Each one served as a touchpoint for a day, a membership, a passage through childhood.

As a sewist, I suggested, “I could make you a T-shirt quilt.”

“That would be awesome,” Lizzie said. Being a scientist, she quickly created neatly folded stacks—each one representing a theme. Girl Scouts, band, Boy Scouts (she met my son through its then co-ed Explorers program), theater productions, trips around the world, and of course a few miscellaneous, un-categorizable shirts.

There were 76 shirts in all.

The next action fell squarely on me.

I did what a lot of creatives do when faced with a large project. I did nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I ruminated on the task. I watched several YouTube videos. I bought the required supplies: batting, bias tape, fusible interfacing. I placed everything in a clear plastic bag, and I pushed the stacks aside for six years.

It’s not that I didn’t think about Lizzie’s T-shirt quilt. I did. At first, often. And then, less........

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