Sour grapes: Common advice on procrastination

Lots of people give advice for beating procrastination, especially online where procrastinators like to congregate and where bloggers like to tell them how to live.

Many of these experts offer the tip, often at the end of a long list of tips, that if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, maybe what you’re doing isn’t important to you.

To me, though, this sounds like a cop out, like saying, “And finally, if you’re a really bad procrastinator, just give up. You didn’t really want it anyway.”

Sour grapes.

You know the story. There’s this fox who wants some grapes. The grapes hang high above the fox on a fence. The fox jumps and jumps but can’t get the grapes. So he finally walks away like, Ah, they probably weren’t ripe anyway. I don’t want any sour grapes.

The fox made up his mind, and then made up his reasons.