Procrastination: Understanding the Enemy Within

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आज करे सो कल कर, कल करे सो परसो,

इतनी भी क्या जल्दी है जब जीना है हमें बरसों

(Meaning, complete today’s task tomorrow and tomorrow’s task, the day after tomorrow. What is the hurry to complete the task when we know we are going to live for long years)

 

The above at times depicts the mentality of the most human being including me. I do not know how many readers have noticed that I have not responded to my last blog’s (Silver Medal) respondents. It is a fit case of procrastination. I was just thinking that I will respond to all the viewers in a day and then it was a week and now almost a couple of months!!! I am sure everyone reading this would have deferred their most important and urgent task sometime in their job or personal life. Maybe a submission of reports, preparing financials, circulating MIS, making vendor payments, filing compliance reports, meeting marketing deadlines, submitting budget on time, complying with inter-department timelines, taking a critical decision of selecting a school/college or classes for their kids, investing in property, going for medical check-up,  etc. The list can be very long. At times we have a habit of completing the work at the last moment under tremendous pressure, which can lead to errors, heartaches, blame games and whatnot. 

 

Have you wondered why we all do this? What are the reasons behind putting the urgent and important task off?  The reason behind procrastination could be disbelief or doubt in our ability to do the task perfectly. We are not confident that we know how to execute the same to perfection. There is self-doubt. Sometimes we do not know the subject or the task or even what is expected from us and hence we procrastinate. We also try to delegate the task to someone and hope that the person would do the basic scratch/work and thereafter we will improve upon it. 

 

Another time we procrastinate is when we do not like the work. We know how to do it, why and when it is required but we feel that it is either not going to be used or we are asked to do certain work which is futile and it’s not going to have an impact on the final decision/analysis. 

 

We also procrastinate when we have a fear of failure and also we are not ready to put in the effort required to do the work. If it is work assigned to us despite someone from the team has already done it in the past and mastered that task, we have a fear inside, what if we are not able to match the speed and quality of work done by the person who already knows how to do it.

 

We also procrastinate when we feel too lazy to do the work. We just wait for our mood to be all right. At times if our physical fitness is not in sync with the agility of our mind, we just procrastinate.  As Fuschia Sirois, PhD, a Professor in Health & Social Psychology at Durham University says procrastination is nothing but poor mood management. Procrastination is not avoiding the task but avoiding the negative emotions attached to the task. We cannot manage our frame of mind/emotions and just put aside the task, which may lead to guilt, self-blame and shame. When it comes to procrastination by someone else, we come crashing very hard on them and when we do it, we try to justify it!

 

In professional work, we at times prioritise our work and defer some of the work which we feel we can do it later. There is a difference between prioritising and procrastinating. We all know in our hearts when we prioritise and when we procrastinate. At times we avoid doing work which we think is difficult, or which compels us to think out of the box, or at times we dislike the same and end up doing easy, unimportant and not-so-urgent work first in the day to falsely satisfy ourselves that we have ticked off one of the pending items and we are productive. In that way, we are fooling ourselves only. I am not getting much into and stopping it right away as it may dilute the subject we are discussing.

 

Have we given a thought, as to why in our personal life (not in our job or professional work), when at times we do not have the targets or deadlines to meet, it is solely dependent on us to start and complete the task, which is beneficial to us and/or our family only, despite that we procrastinate that task? I can give you a certain example. Starting daily exercise or yoga, starting reading a book, reducing our screen time, eating healthy food, waking up early, journalising daily, meditating, praying daily at home, learning musical instruments, and joining online courses to upgrade our skill set, the list is endless. These all are going to help us personally in our life, somewhere or the other,  and despite that, we keep on postponing. I believe we procrastinate in our personal life when that task is not considered a life-changing task by us. It lacks a burning desire to begin and we feel we are going to be alive for a long and can do it later. Not knowing that after some time, we are going to lose that zeal to work on that. At times we fail to continue doing the same over days, weeks and months as we spread ourselves too thin and want to do everything every day which is humanly not possible.  

 

At times deferring or delaying the work, dilutes its importance and before we realise its importance (and at times the task itself) gets deleted from our life. When we wake up or realise once again how much important that task was to us, we would have missed the bus by that time. We have heard ourselves saying so many times that I should have done that course early in my career or should have started exercising or learnt swimming or would have played some games or inculcated the habit of waking up early, or started investing through systematic investment plan early in my life….. But alas! The time has flown. I also feel that I should have given my focus and time to my health, maintaining weight, and giving more time to my personal (including spiritual) well-being and family. But I was after my career and neglected my important personal goals. We all know, time and tide wait for none. In Sanskrit, it is said ते हि नो दिवसा गता: (Those days have gone) or  कालो हि दुरतिक्रमः (Time is insurmountable)

 

Hence Sant Kabirji says 

काल करे सो आज कर, आज करे सो अब ।
पल में परलय होएगी, बहुरि करेगा कब ॥

(Meaning, Finish tomorrow’s task today, and today’s task right now. When would you finish them, if the world were to end in the next moment). 

 

In today’s world, we have heard from many life coaches, saints and wise men saying, live life as if this is your last day. (Jerry Spinelli’s quote – “Live today like there is no tomorrow”) We should not take our time in this world for granted, should be grateful to Almighty for this beautiful day and do the thing which is most important to us in this life. I try (not succeeded so far) to live by the quote – “what I am doing today is most important as I am exchanging a day of my life for it.” 

 

Let us take one step at a time and instead of procrastinating, start doing things (execute) that benefit us. By procrastinating, we are going to harm ourselves only. I have personally experienced that deferring urgent & important work leads to stress. Mel Robbins says procrastination is a form of stress relief. It may give temporary relief to our stress as we just put aside work that we do not like to do and divert our attention but in the long run, it becomes a habit which is dangerous. 

 

If we would like to come out of procrastination, we need to practice or do that task at least for some time of the day irrespective of our mood. We need to cultivate a positive mental attitude towards those tasks. As the old saying “By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch!”.  That way we are practising conditioning our mind that, irrespective of our mood, we need to do important and urgent things every day without any break or justification. Only practice and reflecting when we start to procrastinate help us to come out the same and be masters of our own. 

 

As it is said:

Watch your thoughts, they become words;
Watch your words, they become actions;
Watch your actions, they become habits;
Watch your habits, they become character;
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

 

We all are human beings and have twenty-four hours a day. We can’t do all the task which is required to be done in a day. If we need to procrastinate, then procrastinate consciously on small, unimportant and not-so-urgent tasks which can be delegated to someone else or eliminated altogether. 

 

Have you come across such situations? If yes, what do you do? Would like to hear your thoughts and how you are overcoming procrastination.