《英语走起》恐龙不要抗狼

10、**Dealing with your inner dawdler “If y

　　“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed,” Admiral William McRaven told the graduating class of 2014 at the University of Texas, Austin. What the US Navy counts as “making your bed”—square corners, centred pillow, blanket neatly folded at the foot of the rack—is idiosyncratic.

　　Yet the admiral’s broader point is universal: whether you are a sailor, a salesperson or a CEO, “if you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day.” His commencement speech went viral.

　　Everyone must battle the temptation totemporise every now and again; millions of beds go unmade each morning even on a looser definition than the navy’s. That is also true of people who, like your columnist, a guest Bartleby, more often suffer from the inverse affliction—having trouble putting things off even if they probably ought to be.

　　Still, as someone with a perennial itch for completion, she has some tips for self-professed dawdlers who wish to make their lives more naval.

　　Start off by not calling yourself a procrastinator. Indeed, if you do, you are probably already the opposite. In “Out of Sheer Rage” (1998), Geoff Dyer elevates dilly-dallying to an art form. The book chronicles how the author was wasting his time instead of writing a study on D.H. Lawrence.

　　“All over the world people are taking notes as a way of postponing, putting off and standing in for,” Mr Dyer writes, including supposedly about himself. If only he could make a start, he laments. Given that he managed not just to start but also complete, publish and market a brilliant book—even if the subject matter was less lofty than intended—the lamentations were in fact cogs of productivity.

　　The easiest way to get things finished is to get going in the first place. The reason busy people never stop moving is because their constant movement generates further momentum. This is, obviously, easier said than done—especially if you find a task unpleasant.

　　The more objectionable something seems, the more time you spend thinking about just how awful it is. That in turn makes you even less likely to broach it—and so on. Being aware of this vicious circle does not guarantee you will break out of it. But it is, well, a start.

　　Putting something off doesn’t make it go away. That trivial truth is worth repeating. Just ask the central bankers who kept delaying interest-rate rises even as economists warned of rising inflation. Now they must ratchet rates up further and faster, at the risk of provoking a recession.

　　Most workplace decisions are not nearly as consequential but firms can still suffer material losses if employees put off tasks and decisions. So if that email arrives first thing in the morning, read it and reply—even if that means leaving your bed unmade.

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