Today I’m going back to basics and taking a look at procrastination through the eyes of a number of influential and/or famous people.
Procrastination is a problem for a lot of people. Sometimes it’s just an occasional problem but for others it can be a chronic habit that causes difficulties in many areas of their lives.
Napoleon Hill describes procrastination in terms that we will all find familiar:
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
Like many people, I recognise myself in this quote, although I don’t procrastinate over everything. Some tasks are appealing enough in their own way and I need nothing more than for the task to present itself for me to take action. But sometimes, even tasks that I find appealing fall out of favour and I find myself putting things off.
Why do we procrastinate?
I love this quote from Christopher Parker which illustrates one of the reasons why we procrastinate:
Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.
Imagine all the fun, exciting or relaxing things we can be doing instead of getting on with the task that we know we should be doing. By ‘should’, I don’t mean things like getting the washing up done or washing the car. Instead I’m thinking of those things that will bring us longer term enjoyment and gratification. Our problem is that we’ve become a generation who are obsessed with instant gratification. If it doesn’t please us right now, then we don’t want to wait, consequently taking action on our long term goals is delayed. We take our fun now, and then have to live with the long term consequences. [Read more…] about The Quote Series: Procrastination