What is procrastination? We all have this notion that it is something bad, something which we ought not do. It is supposed to be a bad habit we should strive to shrug off and run away from. But why?
According to the definition, Procrastination means postponing urgent tasks and doing pleasurable things instead. Example- Putting off an important assignment to be done just before the 'deadline' day instead of completing it at the earliest, and instead passing the time by sleeping, gaming, reading novels, watching movies, etc. Your project report or the presentation scheduled next week? Ah, that can wait. I can get up and finish it whenever I want, so why bother the hurry? That's what we tell ourselves. Deep down, we know that is is overwhelming us, controlling us, yet we say these words for some momentary solace and to become free of our guilty conscience.
Now to the point, the reason you're reading this. I'll call the so called non-urgent things which we use to occupy our time 'L' (for Leisure), and the urgent things which we keep on postponing till the last day "U". So what we do now is-do L today, instead of U, next day repeat the same, and in the last day hurriedly finish U. This obviously, as many people inarguably agree, is not good.
The way to overcome this is not so easy. You may become motivated one day and decide to gather yourself up and improve this habit, but the next day the same thing again happens, and you find yourself lying on your couch, wasting yet another day.
So what's the solution? Evidently, I have thought of one, that being the reason I'm writing this. Instead of trying to shed our habit of Procrastinating- and we all know how tough and time taking removing a deep rooted habit (especially those which are bad for us) is- what if we decide that this habit is good for us? Instead of trying fruitlessly often, what if we decide not to remove it, but just to change our perception of it? We can all more or less control our thinking, what we "think" of things.
Let's procrastinate, fine. But change what we think is urgent. Ask yourself and you'll realize that if you think honestly enough- what you like, whether it be snoozing or eating or reading for leisure, what makes you happy, is actually more important in your life. So what is the good thing? What should wait so that you can savour it in the end? Your pending boring tedious work? Or things that make you happy? We all like to save our desserts for the end of the meal. This works in a similar fashion-
Where the problem lies is, that we tend to thing of things that give us enjoyment as 'bad' and things that are our due job as 'good'. This conflict between 'what we want to do' and 'what we should do', this ideal notion we have of ourselves, turns itself into the deadly habit of procrastination. Thus we take tension that we have to finish a particular work, and that would be the 'good' thing, so before that, let's give ourselves some joy but doing what we like. This is what we say to ourselves. To conform to what others want (and what your ideal view of yourself wants), we make the work our dessert. And postpone it. The excuse we give is, "I will do it, it needs to be done, it is THE good thing, so let's have some fun before I begin."!!
But when we let go of this thinking, and accept that what we do while procrastinating, those activities, they are our real desserts, they are the important urgent things that we should do (because we have a right to be happy), then we can reverse the scenario. The work pending becomes what is a chore and should be done, so that we can in the end do the 'good' thing, what we enjoy. If we can try to encompass this into our thinking, and modify it according to our needs, we can use procrastination to keep postponing the joyful things (which are actually not so urgent, but to you they are urgent hence should be done later, due to your habit of procrastinating) and do the 'urgent' work which we used to skip, immediately, so that we can finally enjoy ourselves to our desserts. We have to recognize what we truly want which makes us happy, and why we do those things now and keep the urgent things which are less appealing for later. Although this is opposite to our nature of keeping the desserts for last, we do this because of our conditioned thinking of what's good and what's bad. It's time to leave it, and embrace procrastination in a opposite and positive light, As something of a new and innate part of ourselves. Happy Procrastinating!!
According to the definition, Procrastination means postponing urgent tasks and doing pleasurable things instead. Example- Putting off an important assignment to be done just before the 'deadline' day instead of completing it at the earliest, and instead passing the time by sleeping, gaming, reading novels, watching movies, etc. Your project report or the presentation scheduled next week? Ah, that can wait. I can get up and finish it whenever I want, so why bother the hurry? That's what we tell ourselves. Deep down, we know that is is overwhelming us, controlling us, yet we say these words for some momentary solace and to become free of our guilty conscience.
Now to the point, the reason you're reading this. I'll call the so called non-urgent things which we use to occupy our time 'L' (for Leisure), and the urgent things which we keep on postponing till the last day "U". So what we do now is-do L today, instead of U, next day repeat the same, and in the last day hurriedly finish U. This obviously, as many people inarguably agree, is not good.
The way to overcome this is not so easy. You may become motivated one day and decide to gather yourself up and improve this habit, but the next day the same thing again happens, and you find yourself lying on your couch, wasting yet another day.
So what's the solution? Evidently, I have thought of one, that being the reason I'm writing this. Instead of trying to shed our habit of Procrastinating- and we all know how tough and time taking removing a deep rooted habit (especially those which are bad for us) is- what if we decide that this habit is good for us? Instead of trying fruitlessly often, what if we decide not to remove it, but just to change our perception of it? We can all more or less control our thinking, what we "think" of things.
Let's procrastinate, fine. But change what we think is urgent. Ask yourself and you'll realize that if you think honestly enough- what you like, whether it be snoozing or eating or reading for leisure, what makes you happy, is actually more important in your life. So what is the good thing? What should wait so that you can savour it in the end? Your pending boring tedious work? Or things that make you happy? We all like to save our desserts for the end of the meal. This works in a similar fashion-
Where the problem lies is, that we tend to thing of things that give us enjoyment as 'bad' and things that are our due job as 'good'. This conflict between 'what we want to do' and 'what we should do', this ideal notion we have of ourselves, turns itself into the deadly habit of procrastination. Thus we take tension that we have to finish a particular work, and that would be the 'good' thing, so before that, let's give ourselves some joy but doing what we like. This is what we say to ourselves. To conform to what others want (and what your ideal view of yourself wants), we make the work our dessert. And postpone it. The excuse we give is, "I will do it, it needs to be done, it is THE good thing, so let's have some fun before I begin."!!
But when we let go of this thinking, and accept that what we do while procrastinating, those activities, they are our real desserts, they are the important urgent things that we should do (because we have a right to be happy), then we can reverse the scenario. The work pending becomes what is a chore and should be done, so that we can in the end do the 'good' thing, what we enjoy. If we can try to encompass this into our thinking, and modify it according to our needs, we can use procrastination to keep postponing the joyful things (which are actually not so urgent, but to you they are urgent hence should be done later, due to your habit of procrastinating) and do the 'urgent' work which we used to skip, immediately, so that we can finally enjoy ourselves to our desserts. We have to recognize what we truly want which makes us happy, and why we do those things now and keep the urgent things which are less appealing for later. Although this is opposite to our nature of keeping the desserts for last, we do this because of our conditioned thinking of what's good and what's bad. It's time to leave it, and embrace procrastination in a opposite and positive light, As something of a new and innate part of ourselves. Happy Procrastinating!!
