Later. Someday. Tomorrow but Not Today

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.