The Three Laws of Procrastidynamics

Original Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay, edited by the author #noAI #ByHumansForHumans

A satirical rationalization for why we put things off.

It had been three weeks since my partner had reminded me that I still had a pile of clean, unmatched socks laying in the corner of my office, detritus from an suitcase unpacking session after a trip to L.A.
I had meant to put them away right away, but had gotten a notification on my phone. Two days later, it had been a UPS overnight of my meds knocking at the door just as I had reached for the pile. A week and a half later, while walking towards the corner to take care of them, the cat had jumped on my chair, needing cuddles.
And now, three weeks later, I noticed something: next to the pile, where the empty hamster cage that we planned to give our granddaughter sat, the little wheel was turning. Nothing was on it; there was no evident motive force — but it was turning, steadily, for no apparent reason.
“Weird,” I thought, as I scooped up the socks. The moment my hand touched them, the hamster wheel stopped turning.
I took my hand away from the socks. It turned.
Reached for them. It stopped.
And then a knock came at my front door…

“Mr. Miller?”

“Yes?” I wasn’t really frightened, but I couldn’t think of a reason this badge-flashing half-windsor tie government official was on my porch.

“I am Agent Remus from the National Office of Procrastidynamic Enforcement. We recently noticed a sudden decrease in the intentional energy output from your dwelling, and it is our policy to make a…courtesycall when such incidents occur.” Pronouncing the gentle word seemed to hurt his mouth. “May I come in and speak with you for a moment?”

It wasn’t a request, and I stepped aside. As he came in, he looked immediately at the doorway to my home office. “The incident was there,” he said, pointing. “Were you about to do something?”

I was now far more curious than worried. “Um…yes. I was…” I felt embarrassed, but the truth didn’t feel threatening. “I was about to pick up some socks and put them away.” His non-reactive look and silence worked exactly as intended, and I babbled on. “They’d been there for three weeks, and there was this weird thing with a hamster wheel going on…”

At the mention of the wheel, Agent Remus’ eyes squinted in pain, and his hand came halfway up to a face palm. “A…hamster wheel.” He recovered his composure. “Apologies, Mr. Miller, we thought…we thought it was something much more serious.”

Now I was really curious. “Like…what?”

The agent sighed, and I could tell he was about to lay down some rote explanation that was the verbal equivalent of an expense report. “Mr. Miller, do you understand the idea of potential and kinetic energy?”

I nodded, puzzled at the non-sequitur.

“What you have inadvertently stumbled upon is the third kind of energy: intentional.”

He grimaced. “Only in a Clarke’s Law kind of way, in that you don’t understand the technology behind it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose in that I can’t believe I have to explain this again kind of way.

“Every high school student learns in physics that energy and matter cannot be destroyed, only transformed; what we don’t let the teachers tell them about is the theory of procrastidynamics.”

“Procrasti…” I stumbled over trying to repeat the word.

“ — dynamics. The first law of which is that while energy cannot be destroyed, it can be diverted. Specifically, the energy needed to finish a task can be harnessed for other purposes.”

I thought about my endless task list. “But…wait. If that were true, why would we need anything other than a long list of to-dos?” Then I wished I hadn’t asked it, because Agent Remus’ expression told me I was saying something he was really tired of hearing.

“Because of the second law — regarding time.” He went into recitation mode again. “The longer a task is put off, the more intentional energy it can accumulate.” Tapping his watch, he explained. “Yes, the intentional energy required to do a task is usually expended quickly by people doing it.”

“But time is a force multiplier for procrastinergs — “ he stopped, waited for my face to show my confusion, and continued “ — which are the units used to measure intentional energy.”

He drew an imaginary curve in the air, shallow at first and then rising steeply as his hand lifted over his head. “It’s logarithmic, too.” He pointed at the corner. “How long has that pile of socks been there?”

I told him, and he nodded grimly. “Just enough to move that damn little wheel. If you’d left it there another month, it could have powered an LED.”

My brain was swimming in the implications. “Wait…so you mean that if I leave something undone long enough, I could charge my phone? Heat my house?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. There’s another factor — effort. That’s where the third law comes in:”

My head shuddered as I tried to parse the double negatives. Agent Remus relentlessly continued. “In other words, the amount of effort put into avoiding a task that is not quite finished is directly proportional to the energy produced by not finishing it.”

I couldn’t even figure out how to ask a question about that confusing jumble of words. Agent Remus looked frustrated as well, and then noticed my bookshelf. “You read fantasy books. Ever read the Dark Tower series by King?” When I nodded, he smiled a very unpretty smile.

“You remember how long it took him to finish that series? How many fans were waiting for it? How it took a literal life-threatening accident for him to finally finish it?”

“Yeah…but what does that have to do with…”

“King works for us.” He frowned. “Well, he did, for almost two decades, until he finished the draft of the final book on August 14th, 2003. The book didn’t get published til 2004, of course, and that’s why most people don’t realize that the minute he typed that last punctuation mark it triggered a blackout throughout New England and parts of Ontario.”

My eyes widened, and he nodded grimly. “Look it up. Lasted about three days before we were able to reconnect to another fantasy writer. Authors, game designers, and inventors are great, because there’s a corollary to the third law, called whennage, where the number of people anticipating the completion of a task increases the rate at which the intentional energy can be transferred.”

Things were starting to click. “So…like wattage for electricity?”

Agent Remus nodded. “Yes, exactly. I don’t have time to go into whoage, howage, or whyage; just trust me that procrastidynamics is a thoroughly necessary resource. We have a whole cadre of creators keeping the U.S. energy grid going.”

He held up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “Batgirl getting canceled. Elon Musk’s self-driving car project. Invaluable sources of intentional energy. Duke Nukem Forever helped launch the last Mars probe.” He paused. “It’s not just us. George Miller fueled the Australian defense forces until he couldn’t stand it anymore and started making more Mad Max movies. ”

His eyes grew distant. “There’s a particular fantasy author whose unfinished book keeps the lights on in most of the midwest.” His voice became almost reverential. “A goddamn American hero — resisting not just the creative muse but also agents, publicists, Hollywood offers, millions of fans.”

Agent Remus shook himself out of his reverie and stared hard at me. “Creatives can only take the strain so long before they finally cave in and make something — but their sacrifice must not be in vain.” He pointed a finger at me. That’s where people like you come in.”

Suddenly I felt nervous again. “Wha — what do you mean?”

The man from N.O.P.E. stayed another half hour, installing a menacing black box in the corner of my office, engraved with an imposing DO NOT TOUCH warning symbol. “This is the latest Meant Energy Harvester our procrasticysicists — yeah, we need a better name for them, we just haven’t gotten around to it yet — came up with.”

“Meant energy harvester?”

“Yes, as in it harvest the energy from things you meant to do.”

I looked at it. It was weirdly threatening, but not in a direct way. There was a brutalist simplicity to the coffee-table sized device, but I couldn’t see any plugs or sockets. “What do I do with it?”

“Nothing.” There was satisfaction in his voice. “We can’t make you un-know what you now know, and we can’t have you riding around on some unwashed-laundry-powered skateboard — so now you get to work for us.”

He pointed to the pile of socks, still there in the corner. “You’ve proven yourself enough of a procrastinator to now contribute to the fight for energy independence. Keep on not doing things — the more important, the longer undone, the better — and that’s all we need from you.”

“But…” I was starting to feel trapped — a different kind of task paralysis, enforced by the MEH in the corner of my office. “I have a job…projects…hobbies…”

Agent Remus had already turned towards my door, his hand on the knob. “Oh, we know,” he said over his shoulder. “Thanks to social media, we know just how much you plan to do.” Just before he closed the door, he gave me one more piercing look. “We thank you for your purpose.”

As the door latched, I just stood there, stunned, trying to understand what had just happened. I thought about the dice tower I hadn’t painted. The half-finished illustrations for the bujo article. The white board with last-months task list on it, half with checkmarks, half without.

It all seemed somehow both vitally important and totally meaningless at the same time. I couldn’t think of what I should do next.

The box in the corner started to softly hum.