UNITED STATES—If there is something that I’ve always struggled with is procrastination. For those not in the know, procrastination is when you delay something for whatever reason. I have struggled with this issue greatly since high school, but I have gotten much better. Why? I realize when you procrastinate it only creates stress. Stress is not good people. It can cause all sorts of problem, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I think the physical stress that I encounter from procrastination is far worse.
It leads to sleepless nights, it can lead to one being snappy or dismissive to others and it can lead to you taking on a bigger workload than what you have to do. Procrastination can lead to heavy workloads. Things that you could have done on Monday, but you’ve pushed off until Tuesday means you have more to do on Tuesday than what you normally would have to do.
Yeah, we all love that saying that I’ll take care of it tomorrow, but in living with that notion you can stack up the responsibilities that sometimes can get the best of you. Procrastination is a big world for simply saying, “You don’t want to deal with something.” We all have that transpire in our lives on a consistent basis. You had a bad day, you had a tough day, the kids were screaming, you didn’t get any sleep, there were too many things to do, and the list goes on and on and on.
In the long run, they are simply excuses, so if you continue to make excuses for things, what do you think is ultimately going to happen? It is going to catch up with you and when it does you have to face the reality that the problem staring you directly in the face is something that could have been avoided if you tackled the problem when it first arrived. Yes, I know there are people who will argue well I was off work the day that an email, a text or something else came across your desk, and that is a very valid point. However, just because you’re not scheduled to work, does not mean you have to work. If you can handle something that might take 2-3 minutes to complete, just do it and have it out of the way. That is the approach that I have started to take in my life.
Why? It makes the day, the week, the month, the year run a bit smoother and those things that were procrastinated has been taken care of and those worries are not twirling in your mind for hours, days, weeks, months, etc. Procrastination can be something that stars at an early age and if you start a bad habit early it becomes significantly harder to stop it.
It becomes a norm, it becomes a bad habit that as much as you want to rid your life of it, you cannot. Don’t allow a bad habit to haunt you when you can stop it in its tracks by acknowledging it is a problem and you want to fix it.
Written By Zoe Mitchell
