Procrastination: Why “Later” Inevitably Turns Into “Never”

What’s up everyone! This week, I want to talk to you all about this crazy little thing called procrastination. We’ve all fallen prey to the “I’ll just do it later” bug. Some more than others, but either way we have all faced procrastination to a certain degree. To quote the American author Charles Dickens, “Procrastination is the thief of time”. Listen, everyone gets the same 24 hours in a day. What you accomplish in those hours is entirely up to you. Crazy, right?! To think that our own actions are completely under our control. So if this is the case, why do so many people fall prey to procrastination? There’s a bunch of ways to answer that question. For one, we live in a world where technology is advancing faster than we could’ve ever imagined. I feel like since we as a society have gotten so accustomed to things being readily available and completed in milliseconds, the thought of completing a task that is going to take any longer than 5 minutes sounds daunting so we don’t even bother to try. Or worse, we plan to complete a task, but then we never get around to it because life gets in the way and that ends up taking precedence over whatever task(s) we planned to accomplish. We simply put that one thing off for “later”. That one task put off today turns into two tasks for tomorrow, four tasks the next day until we’re neck deep in things that need to be completed and end up never getting around to any of it. BUT, we planned for it so that’s better than doing nothing, right? Wrong. Now don’t get it twisted (or dare I say, crossed up?! Bare with me people, the puns and dad jokes will only grow from this point on), there is nothing wrong with planning. In fact, planning is one of the best things we can do when it comes to accomplishing a task and achieving any type of goal. However, plans without action are simply just ideas put on paper. Napoleon Bonaparte says, “Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” We can plan and prepare to accomplish certain things whether it’s a big task or a small task, but after a while, you have to be the one to put one foot in front of the other and take action towards completing the task at hand. To use myself as an example, I just started this website to promote my podcast about a week ago. Do you have any idea how long I’ve had “Crossed Up” as a mere thought? Roughly seven months. SEVEN MONTHS, PEOPLE! Why? Life, personal issues, basketball, etc. are all acceptable reasons why I never got around to it, but the main reason why I kept putting this off was because I kept wanting things to be perfect from the recording audio to the editing all the way down to color scheme of my website. I always planned to get the website done and record my podcast but kept putting it off because “the time wasn’t right”. It was to the point where if I kept on waiting for the perfect time, I would never even have this website. The perfect time doesn’t exist and so long as we keep waiting for things to be “perfect” before we decide to take action with whatever task(s) we need to complete, we will never accomplish those things. Furthermore, the more we keep putting things off until the next day, we’ll only be left with a whole lot of $#!+ to do. Time, like life, goes on. Time doesn’t care if you put things off, but you should. Because the more time you make excuses and put things off for tomorrow, there may not be any tomorrow’s left. We all get the same 24 hours in a day. What you do throughout the day is in your hands. Time stops for no one, and neither should you. So no matter the task, big or small, choose to get it done now. Brick by brick, task by task, day in and day out you will see just how much more productive you are and how much more accomplished you feel versus putting it all off.