What does the musical Hamilton have to do with procrastination?

Our youngest daughter and I watched the musical Hamilton on Disney+ over the weekend.  The movie was released at the beginning of the month, but it's actually edited together from three performances by the original Broadway cast in June 2016.  Regardless, we still enjoyed it - in my opinion, the musical lived up to all of its hype.  The main protagonist of the musical is our nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton.  The muscial is in fact based upon the 2004 biography written by Ron Chernow.  The main antagonist is Aaron Burr, one of our nation's so-called "Founding Fathers" who served as our 3rd Vice President (during Thomas Jefferson's first term as President of the United States), who famously shot and killed Alexander Hamilton during a duel (sorry - I should have warned you about the Spoiler!).

Aaron Burr once said, "Never do today what you can do tomorrow.  Something may occur to make you regret your premature action."  Perhaps he was thinking about dueling?  I am not certain of the context of this quote, but it's quite clear that Burr is advocating for procrastination here!

We are all - okay, at least most of us - really good at procrastination.  I am sorry to confess that I recently finished a work assignment that was due by the end of today.  The work was originally assigned at the end of May, so I had more than 2 months to complete it.  What did I do?  I absolutely waited until the last possible minute to finish the work.  I will even admit to you that I didn't even start working on the assignment until this past week!

Why do we procrastinate so much?  Do we really agree with the philosophy of a man famous for killing the man who was played by Lin-Manuel Miranda?  Or is it that we work better with a deadline?

Before you answer, I would like to tell you about a 20th century British naval historian named Cyril Parkinson.  During his long career, Parkinson wrote over 60 books, but his most famous was the best-seller Parkinson's Law, which he wrote in 1957.  The book describes what has come to be called, "Parksinson's Law," which states simply, "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."  If you are interested, you don't have to read his book - check out a very brief article that he wrote for The Economist magazine in 1955 (see link here).  According to Parkinson's Law, we spend a good portion of our lives wasting time!

Just think about it - how much time do we spend mindlessly daydreaming, playing games like "Candy Crush" on our smart phones, or checking the lastest cat videos on social media?  Trust me - I am NOT criticizing, I waste a lot of time too!  Case in point - I waited until the last possible minute to finish up an assignment.

We have become experts at putting off until tomorrow what we should be doing today!  Parkinson was simply the one who actually described it in terms of a fundamental law of human nature.  The U.S. military, arguably one of the most well-run organizations around, is no stranger to Parkinson's Law.  Consider that the unofficial slogan for the U.S. military is "Hurry Up and Wait".  

Now, how do we avoid succumbing to our procrastinator tendencies?  At least one article recommends creating artificial constraints for ourselves by setting up deadlines!  Deadlines give us a goal to achieve - they give us a finite point in time that our work has to be complete.  It's the same thing if you always set your alarm clock 5 or 10 minutes ahead of time, giving you the impression that it is later than you think (i.e. a deadline to get moving!).  It's pure genius when you think about it.

So there you have it - in less than three degrees of separation, I have forged an everlasting connection between the musical, Hamilton and procrastination!  It's just a short step from there to Parkinson's Law and the use of artificial time constraints - deadlines - to get you back on task!