Remember when you were a college student? There was this assignment you had to do. Instead of doing it, you slacked in social media instead. Or when the exam was less in a week, instead of studying, you watched youtube videos of cats doing backflip, playing video games or just went sleeping all day? You thought: "Relax, I'll study later", or "No worries, the professor is a good guy, he'll let me pass", and so on. Remember how did that feel? Felt good right? Slacking around, running from your responsibility as a student.
TOP 10 REASONS I PROCRASTINATE
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Now that we are technically full-fledged adults, are we still doing such things? When your boss gives you task, when you have something important to do, we opt to do them in last minutes. "Let's play another round", "I'll just watch one more episode before starting", etc.
Procrastination. The act of delaying or postponing something. To a certain degree, we all do it, with many reasons: too lazy to do it, there is another attractive things over there, thinking that we have time. As for students motto: Due tomorrow, do tomorrow.
There are many pros and cons about the procrastination. Bill Gates said: "To be a good professional engineer, always study late for the exams. Because it teaches you to manage time and tackle emergencies”.While Buddha said: "The problem is we think we have time (while we may actually don’t)". Personally, I try to position myself as anti-procrastination, even though that is not 100% true. And I really think that we should try to stop delaying things needed to be done, as many regrets may come to us.
I remember one of my friend back in the college. Let's call him Jack. We studied together the night before exam. He never bothered to study at all before that. The study went well, the exam went well for me. Shortly after, the result came out. I passed, with satisfying result, while Jack didn't. He missed only 1 point.
1 point.
1 more point and he wouldn't have to re-do the course next semester.
He kinda complained: "Dammit, if only I had one more day to study, I would have passed that test". Hearing that, I was angry at him. I shouted at him: "Dude! you had a whole week to prepare for the exam, what were were you doing then?"
Okay, in many of us' defense we would say that there are many things to do, we are busy, etc. But, let's try to reflect on this: how many of those things really had to be done quickly? Or rather, how many of those "precious" hours were actually used for something productive or urgent, not for just netflix marathon, slacking aroung, scrolling through social media, or playing video games? Do you think that converting only 30% of those wasted times would be a game changer for you?
When we have obligations to do, we tend to postpone it until we feel like it. We choose to have fun first, then doing the necessary later. We think we have time. Once again, we think we have time. But do we? Take Jack as an example. He chose to study one night before the exam, instead of several nights before. Luckily its just a college exam. He could just re-take the course next semester. But what if that was a job? He might have lost his career.
What Bill Gates said about studying late for exams does have some truth on it. Still, I prefer to prepare myself more. After all, we cannot be too prepared for battle. I prefer drenched in sweat training rather than have to bathe in my own blood during the battle.
Let us talk about procrastination in other aspects of life. Let's say you have brilliant business idea. The one that might change the world. Instead of starting to develop that idea, you just let it go. Your defense: wait for enough money to realize it, wait until you get married, wait for miracle to happen, etc. Well, it is not wrong. After all, you cannot build a business overnight. But then again, after that, how many times have you thought about it? How much time and energy have you invested on developing that idea? Until some time after, some random guy with similar idea actually made money and fame out of it. There you go, regretting knowing that your idea is actually a very good one but cannot do anything about it.
Another mini examples: Delaying from doing necessary things
Abusive spouse/ partner. Trapped in unhappy and unhealthy relationship. Instead of ending it (or at least talk about it), you choose to remain silent. The reason: you kinda feel bad for them since you love them.
Some parts of your car are broken. Instead of repairing them, you just let them as they are. The reason: you are busy, going o the mechanic is time consuming and pricy, after all, the car still runs properly.
You are in your mid-30s, but too lazy to even bother exercising. The reason: Busy working, busy taking care of the kids. But in fact, other than that you just scrolling through social media all day.
Those 3 examples seem harmless. But they are all basically time bombs with impeccably bad timing.
After 6 months...BOOM! Your partner resorts to violence. From verbal abuse to physical abuse
After 3 months...BOOM! The damage of the broken parts propagated to other car parts, rendering your car unable to even start.
After 3 years...BOOM you get heart attack and diabetes out of your unhealthy lifestyle.
In some occasions, the damage will be repairable, but some won't be or you will be too late. In small scale, procrastinating is harmless, and I believe we all do it. Even in some condition, delaying or postponing is necessary. But it would be perfect if we can train ourselves to not procrastinate. First, to avoid the time bomb like I mentioned in 3 examples above. Second, to anticipate if there is something urgent coming during the last minutes when we start doing the job.
I hope we all can train ourselves to be productive and refrain from procrastinating
Regards.