The International Federation of Who Cares

Busted Laptop with Unmade Bed in Background

The International Federation of Who Cares

What is it that keeps people from completing the tasks they need to complete? What causes procrastination?

Many years after I gained intimate acquaintance with procrastination, I had the long-delayed epiphany that the basic origin of procrastination is hidden in the statement "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". As a Italophone, I was surprised to learn that this aphorism usually attributed to Voltaire is based on the Italian: "Le meglio è l'inimico del bene".

Now, I don’t claim the procrastination in my writing work is a symptom of perfectionism. Incompletion in my work probably stems more an approach to it left over from how I wrote when I was first strongly conditioned to write. 

When most people were more focused on writing papers (which I also did) I became more concerned with writing scripts for theatrical plays because the scripts were expected of me (long story which I may or may not get to.) The scripts I wrote fit a certain format. Unlike playscripts one may read in literature class-- and as I first wrote scripts-- my endeavor  centered on writing LESS: with less scenic and lighting detail and fewer blocking details and line readings.  

I came to understand of the process of writing as one which leaves room for collaborative input from other professionals-- designers, directors and actors.  Hence, I became more inclined to leave my writing work incomplete, awaiting feedback from other.

In the folowing years event till  today, on several assignments I’ve maintained that approach towards writing and discovered that my assumption was way wrong-headed. In most instances, it was instead expected that the written material I turned in would be 100% done; not a penultimate draft on which editorial comment and collaboration would be offered. certainly. 

This attitude to prose writing is like another form of writing I did when I was younger-- songwriting. I wrote songs by myself, writing both the music and lyrics, doing my own “nitpicking” until the product suited my standard as “perfect”  This practice has oddly made me super-critical of songwriting--  especially songs written by songwriting teams.

For example-- and drawing in the topic of “nitpicking”--  the weirdest lyric that has ever leapt out of a song was written is at the beginning of the song written by the Bee Gees for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.  I admire the (B)rothers (G)ibb’s writing skill and I will reinforce this admiration in referring to their work on another song which I will feature in this month’s Karaoke Song spotlight, "Too Much Heaven".

But their lyric which has always struck as flawed is that of “Islands in the Stream”. "IITS" is a fun song about mutual devotion which begins with an astoundingly off-tone analogy:

Baby, when I met you there was peace unknown
I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb

Huh? 

Anyone who has ever used a “fine tooth comb” knows that if you set out to get anything with one of these devices, you're basically seeking a louse (or its eggs). This weird phrase hasn’t prevented the song from becoming a beloved classic and the Bee Gees regarded as expert songwriters, but here we have both the literal and figurative failure of nitpicking.

Perhaps they are the charter members of the International Federation of Who Cares?  Do you wonder what IFWC is, and how to join?

My work with a team of two other co-worker in the travel industry.  We would (I believe) literally tear our hair out trying to make three destination brochures, consisting of a total over one hundred pages featuring hundred of hotels with thousands of price point absolutely error free. This longtime experience later on in my life reinforced the belief process I has as a scriptwriter-- seeing writing was a seemingly eternal collaborative free-for-all. 

The descriptive copy I wrote portraying hotels, tours and destinations would always be nitpicked over-- until the core team with which I worked discovered the International Federation of Who Cares.

For three years preparing these brochure promoting product in Hawaii, Mexico and Tahiti we always failed at being 100% perfect-- and received grief for our failed effort. Probably the grief we received was mostly self-originating, until we created the IFWC.

We didn't descend into the dismay of the impossible pit of nitpicking. Whenever my boss would lament that our work was “a complete mess", my reply was "It's not a complete mess. It’s an incomplete success”. This touchy-feeling slogan was roundly mocked.

Ultimately our route to colalborative madness wound up at the cul-de-sac of IFWC. This acronym began as an abbreviation of a phrase we’d utter in frustrate disgust as our deadline approached and yet minor errors would arise.

We’d say/ask of the end result of our efforts: It’s Fine! Who Cares?

The phrase became “IFWC”. From there this union of good enough was universalized into the International Federation of Who Cares. This global brotherhood/sisterhood exists to this day when anyone has had enough in the search for perfection.

Anyone who is in the midst of a dispiriting search for perfection-- who has proofread and corrected to distraction and who despairs that a job well done is a job never done may join merely but taking a deep breath and intoning:

"It’s Fine! Who Cares?"

________________ Self-evaluation

Yeesh. Where to begin?  An essay on the topic of procrastination completed nine days late?  The reason: being trapped in an existential hell where the revelation of a determination is put off while the determination undergoes a "quality review" which can take several months.

I did some revision in the following days which brought the piece more into focus.

But concentration seems impossible. (No real world details will be shared in this blog until THAT process is complete.) At the very least I was able to ignore the arrival on an email related to that process until I got this posted.