I was in a casual conversation with my childhood friend,
Robin, when he said ‘Don’t you have more time now, saving on your commute time
of about 3 hours. How are you utilizing that time? You have been asking me on
movies, books, articles. Tell me, are you going to watch any of these or read
any of the books I mentioned.’
‘Yes, of course, I’ll check these. And…’
He cut me halfway and said ‘Megs, If I know you well, you
are not going anywhere with this to-watch list. Simply because of your
procrastinating nature.’
This took me by surprise not because he was spot on but on
confronting this to me. I laughed and so did he and we continued our
conversation.
But this small conversation kept me thinking. The word kept
echoing in my thoughts.
Procrastination. Its
dictionary meaning is – the action of delaying or postponing something. It is
the force that prevents one from following through on what one sets to do.
I know many fellas, who have set some goals in this Covid
situation. Reading 10 books in lock-down or watching 5 movies over the weekend. Forget
the leisurely goals, go on to LinkedIn and I see 10-12 folks every day in my
network flashing their accomplishments on completing professional courses /
certifications that might boost their careers or they did so just out of the
sheer joy of learning (which I highly doubt).
When it comes to me, Yes, I am a procrastinator. I don’t
deny it. I simply can’t act until my heart is 100 %convinced. I like to explore
options available at hand and make a ‘choice’. Yes, sometimes, I would take
time to even decide upon the course of action – so much of time that either I
lose an interest or the event itself becomes unimportant. That’s how my mental
wireframe works. –this is how I excuse myself from feeling bad. You can see my procrastinator
mind speaking right now. Does this resonate with you as well?
But does that mean, I push away all the things on to
tomorrow? No.
I realized that I have the habit of procrastination way back
during my first job. It also dawned on me that this habit had got me into bad
situations before as well. It was then I decided to work on overcoming it. I
read many blogs on this topic and applied different techniques. But, too many choices
and options spoils us.
Hence, I decided to just hold on to one thing, which resonated
with me – prioritizing activities.
Yes, prioritization helps. I set simple goals for the day, 2
out of 5 things are important to me. I need to do it ‘today’ itself else bomb
will explode and make my life hell. I have to train my mind every single day to
finish those top 2 tasks despite all the distractions encountered all throughout
the day. But can prioritization help alone? No. The tasks need to be realistic
too. The combination of two has worked well for me and help me to keep my mind
sane.
How this has helped? One-line answer to this is – it helps
me to distinguish my critical tasks from what is ‘good to do’ but ‘not
important’.
I used the word ‘Choice’ in one of the above paragraphs. It’s
tricky word as often it is used as a weapon to defend oneself. It’s important
that one understands that there is thin line between decisions made out of
choices and out of laziness or lethargic attitude. If you haven’t realized it,
I would advise you to next time monitor your decisions – is it out of choice or
your lazy spirit has cast a spell on you.
And now circling this to closure - how this blog post
started, it was all due to the constant push from my family members, friends
like Robin and LinkedIn posts which all talks about ‘Do it now, Do it today’.
What one constantly feeds into mind, reflect into actions eventually. So, read
well and surround yourself with folks who are constantly running behind you for
your own good.
To end this post, I’ll quote Buddha “The trouble is, you
think you have time.”
Do we have time? If yes, question is – are we living it or
letting it slip away. If not, question is – what is it that we would want to
do today? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
