Procrastination – the Thief of Time

Thomas Jefferson said, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today!” Seems I’ve known those words all my life. My Mom quoted them to me when I’d wait to study for a test until the last minute or wait to practice my piano until the day of my next lesson. But, here I am, many years later, still procrastinating on things I should get done TODAY!

My pal of over seven years is my workhorse laptop. I'm guilty. I've overfed it with tons of data input, word processing, graphics, and publishing projects. From a vast array of mistreatment, I noticed it was getting sluggish and its performance was lackluster. I started getting annoyed at my faithful friend and started whining about it instead of taking it in for a "medical" check-up. I kept waiting on it, sometimes up to 20 minutes, while the little circle on the screen, just spun. I procrastinated on getting something done about it….and it was stealing my time.

When my patience was at its limit two weeks ago, I decided to rid myself of the daily laptop burden I was carrying. I searched and found a computer technician in my community. I had to release my devoted, faithful laptop for a week, but today I am typing this post on my completely healed and whole, refurbished computer with a new solid-state drive, upgraded operating system, cleaned out from the seven years of gunk build-up inside, and it is now moving faster than a speeding bullet – well maybe not quite that fast, but let’s just say, what took 20 minutes before, is less than a minute now. Whoo Hoo! My faithful pal has been restored and I'm its happy user again.

Why oh why did I wait so long? I “put up with” my pal's flaws and procrastinated. I thought I was just too busy to stop and “smell the roses”, or rather, stopping to find a technician. We may not stop to go to the doctor about an annoying physical issue, or going to the gym to work off some of those Christmas treats, or better yet, stopping to have a little talk with Jesus to make everything right. Instead, we just keep “putting up with” issues and procrastination gets the best of us!

It's time to come to a screeching HALT and evaluate those annoyances and do something about them TODAY. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It’s the little things that have a HUGE impact on our energy, how we feel, and even on how much we produce. It's time to stop complaining about this or that and do something about this or that TODAY! When we change our old patterns from “putting off till tomorrow", we’ll be more productive, having better time management, better health, having more friendships, more quality family time, and business success.