Procrastination

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” 
—Olin Miller

Procrastination is one of the most difficult things to understand and stop because it often becomes a habit. Usually when we need to change a bad habit we have to replace it with a good habit.

We don’t procrastinate about things we love to do, of course, so it is those things we don’t want to do that we put off. The delay in doing is usually worse for us than the actual doing of the duty. And once we do that thing we dread, the thing we procrastinate over, we feel better. So why not just do it rather than put it off?

According to Harold Taylor, “procrastination is the intentional and habitual postponement of an important task that should be done now.” If it’s intentional we may have to do some soul searching to figure out why certain tasks always get pushed back on our agenda.

It seems that the easier life becomes with all of the gadgets and tools we have, the more readily we find places to occupy our time and things that help us procrastinate. Checking e-mail or surfing the Web can be a problem if we find ourselves spending hours at a time online when we intended to and needed to do something more urgent and necessary.

When we identify those things that we procrastinate over, we should begin to create a good habit by doing those things first. Once we get them out of the way the rest of our day is a breeze and we don’t have to worry about and dread that task.

For some people making a to-do list helps get all tasks done rather than always leaving the dreaded ones undone. On the to-do list there might also need to be a reminder not to get distracted by whatever it is that pulls us away from our tasks. For some that is surfing the Internet, for others it’s standing around the proverbial water cooler for a chat about the latest football game or upcoming election. We can start to set limits on ourselves for those activities which help us procrastinate and use that time to finish the project we avoid.

When you stop procrastinating you will actually have more time to have fun.