Procrastination = the act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention.
This past week-end, I had big plans. I wanted to write one or two chapters for Imperial Struggle, write some four to five articles for this blog, work on some other projects that I have, make some food and many other stuff. Do you know what I’ve managed to do? Almost nothing. I didn’t do any writing, and didn’t make myself any food (actually I’m doing it right now) and overall I did nothing. I spent all my weekend watching some movies, browsing on the internet and did some light reading.
I knew that I was procrastinating, but I still did it. And then I’ve started to ask myself why did I did this; why knowingly I didn’t did the tasks that I set for myself, not that I received from someone.
First answers that appeared in my mind were the excuses.
I was having a cold ( and indeed I had). How could I work in such conditions? When a man is sick, he just needs a rest and I needed one as well. While indeed, I was down with a small cold, it was not enough reason to avoid the work. It was just an excuse, that my mind used to trick me. That was the first excuse.
The second answer was that I was tired. I had a hard week at work, even doing some extra hours, working on some hard tasks; basically, I was exhausted. So I deserved some rest, to do nothing at all for two days. Because on Monday we would start over again. So why don’t I take some days off? I deserve, goddammit.
The third answer is that I could do it later. Why not, I have the whole weekend available to me. I will be able to write later, I will be able to do that later. Later, not now, but later I will do everything. But later never came, because later, it’s later; it’s always in the future.
And this was the trifecta that conquered my productivity for the week-end. And not only for the week-end, because moments like this are common. How many time I didn’t postponed something just because I was a little tired, or because I could do it later? How many times I didn’t tell me “Just 30 minutes, and I will stop playing and work”.
This is what procrastination is. Constant delaying, constant postponing, because later, it’s always a place where we have the time to do it. It’s not like now we are doing something special, it’s just… it would be better to do it later.
There are many ways to fight procrastination, and I could write an article only about this subject. But… not now. Maybe later :).