You don’t want to rush into anything: so just wait till next week!
July 13, 2004
Gee, I’ve been putting this off for a week; it is about time to bust a move. Of course, the move must be made in a slow and cautious manner for fear of chasing off the miniscule ambition it took to fire up the computer.
Such is the way of the procrastinator. You must convince yourself that the chore you are working on is less important and easier to perform than that black cloud of a project you have been avoiding for weeks.
Procrastination has been called a “hardening of the oughteries”. You know you ought to perform that odious task, but you sensibly (in your mind) find a substitute for it. Better yet, ignore them both and go fishing!
Many people think procrastination is simply laziness, but that is not necessarily true. The accomplished procrastinator will work his tail off finding excuses to put off until tomorrow that which should be done today.
“One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow,” said one Vincent T. Foss, a very wise but mostly unacknowledged man.
One of the hazards of procrastination is that you become so good at ignoring things you forget that some things just can’t be let go. Most of them can happily be shelved for weeks, even months, as you busy yourself following trivial pursuits that free your cluttered mind from the heartless taskmaster, responsibility.
But, alas, you have to pay bills, keep the house and car from falling apart, and keep working. Most, but certainly not all, procrastinators do fine at work, keeping their priorities straight and saving their lard-butt tendencies for their private life.
They firmly believe that if anything were worth doing, it would have been done already.
I can’t answer for anyone else, but I will never put off until tomorrow what I can forget about forever.
It seems to me that the new millennium is tailor-made to promote procrastination.
Satellite TV, video games, audiobooks, malls, scantily clad females, sports, a society saturated with sex to distract the unwary, everything under the sun is designed to steal the attention of those with the willpower of a mouse.
Squeak, squeak.
Of course, any self-respecting mouse would be appalled if he let his food supply dwindle because he was too distracted and lazy to replenish it.
What did I do with those dog biscuits? They aren’t too bad with peanut butter.
If I had a dime for every time I have pushed a chore off to a new construction date, I could hire a surly butler to do the hard cores for me. Don’t sweat the small stuff, even if it’s big.
Th world is a cruel place and there is rarely room for second chances, but for some reason a hardcore procrastinator is the world’s most optimistic human. They think everything will work out, no matter what.
They can’t possibly be penalized for laziness.
In fact, they might even win the lottery!
