We’ve all been here before. Not wanting to do our laundry, convincing ourselves that it can wait until the next day, and we continue telling ourselves that we’ll do it in five minutes, which (as we well know) can turn into five days. We make priority time for what we want to do, meanwhile all of the other things are piling up, the dishes, laundry, homework, cleaning, etc. This addictive bad habit is called procrastination. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary definition is “to put off intentionally and habitual; to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done; blameworthy delay especially through laziness or apathy.”
Procrastination can be a problem in societies and countries. Studies have shown that those who procrastinate have “worse academic performance, worse financial status, increased interpersonal relationship issues, reduced wellbeing, and worse mental and physical health.”
Charles Dickens said, “Procrastination is the thief of time.” There are miles of excuses that we make up to try to right our wrongs, when it comes to procrastinating important things. It seems like the right time never really comes along, or we aren’t feeling “in the mood” to do it in the moment. I feel like many of us are afraid to start, because we don’t want to fail. We are afraid of becoming great. After accepting that, I realized that we can never fail if we never try.
We are bound to fail at times, but we are also bound to fly, succeed, and run with the wind, once we grow from our mistakes and failures. The truth is, we have to do the work right now. Most of us intellectually know what we need to do, however, “knowing isn’t doing.”
I believe this problem has a lot to do with how we think about tasks, because our thoughts will make a big difference on how we act upon them and how probable it is that we will procrastinate on them. “Action will destroy your procrastination,” remarked Org Mandino. Reading that made me think about the disease of procrastination in a different way, as my perspective changed. We have to act and not postpone, and our choices are critical to choosing between now and later, the past and the present.
Time is moving along like a steady meter, and so is life. They are not going to slow down just for us to play another game or watch another episode, instead of folding the rags or filling out necessary paperwork. We have to move forward with life, as it is an eternal dance that will forever be moving, whether we are pushing on with it or not.