Lester Morton Waas

In honor of International Procrastination Week—celebrated during the first or the second week of March, depending upon how much you put it off—we’ll feature the greatest procrastinator in all human history (yes, I know, besides you). In my book The Procrastination Equation I mentioned Samuel Coleridge, one of the great poets of the nineteenth century. Though he did manage to finish The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge completed little else, constantly putting off almost every obligation or project he ever had. He is surely in the running, but was he the greatest? There are plenty of others to choose from.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first English language dictionary, is a credible candidate. As his friend Hester Piozzi remembered, he did almost all of his composition last minute, including a famous essay about procrastination for The Rambler, which he finished while the errand boy waited outside to bring it to press. Or consider Richard Sheridan, a politician and playwright, who did Dr. Johnson one better; he finished writing the final act for his play The School for Scandal while it was being performed on opening night, bringing down lines piecemeal to the actors. And then there is Leonardo Da Vinci. Who among us is called out as a distractible, doodling scatterbrain by a pope? An exasperated Leo X exclaimed, “This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning.”

But I’m going with none of these. In fact, the person I want to celebrate is still alive: Mr. Les Waas. Born two weeks late, Waas is an advertising executive from Pennsylvania, deviser of a thousand jingles including the one Mr. Softy ice cream trucks use to lure children. What makes Les the greatest procrastinator isn’t the amount he procrastinates; he ran his own advertizing agency for 46 years and served as president for his regional chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Independence Toastmasters, and the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia, so he has a history of accomplishment behind him. Rather, it is the flair with which he procrastinates, which is unequalled. You see, Les Waas is also the president of the