1. Procrastination
A recent consumer report on the amount of time people in Britain waste
makes startling reading. The report indicated that they spend on average
each week 1 hour, 30 minutes stuck in traffic jams; 36 minutes waiting for
public transportation; 1 hour, 24 minutes dealing with bureaucracy; 1 hour,
12 minutes waiting in line at shops or banks; 1 hour, 24 minutes looking for
things at home; and 1 hour, 18 minutes shopping for things without success.
In total, they waste about seven and a half hours each week in the above
ways, which adds up to about two and a half years over the average person’s
lifetime. I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that this information
took the wind out of my sails.
Dr. Piers Steel is known for getting to the heart of the subject of
putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. The Gail Kasper
Consulting Group revealed a panorama of details in 2002: 40% of
Americans wait till the last minute to file their taxes. Procrastinating on
payment costs people an average of $400, and makes the country richer by
over $473 million in overpayments. The survey also found that 42% of
respondents delay saving for the future, and 43% put off going to the doctor.
“A diversity of other professions follows this idea, that procrastination
brings untold suffering,” says Steel.
How many times have you procrastinated in life, or how many times
have you flirted with the idea of postponing things that should have been
started at the right moment? Without exception, procrastination is a complex
psychological behavior that affects everyone to some degree or another.
(Checking e-mail from your friends instead of drafting important official
letters is procrastination.) With some people, procrastination can be a minor
problem; with others, it is a problem for their lifetime. The more we
procrastinate, the bigger the task ahead becomes, and the harder it is to take
action. The long and short of it is, procrastination impedes your growth in
life. An ancient proverb states: “It is not the size of the tree but the depth of
its roots that make it strong.” Procrastination usually has very deep roots.
Now comes the burning question: How is procrastination defined?
Procrastination means putting off a task until the eleventh hour. The word
itself comes from the Latin word procrastinatus, which means “forward to
tomorrow.” When you procrastinate, you are caught up in an unclear
situation as to whether you want to progress or stagnate in life. You are

2. consciously rhapsodizing about the joys of making progress, but
subconsciously you view the matter with a different lens, i.e., wanting to
stay in the same place. From a subconscious point of view, you are
preventing yourself from taking steps that you know you should take to
achieve the outcomes you desire consciously. Procrastination is an
unintelligent method of hoodwinking ourselves. It is a common time
management problem. Some folks slip into the “procrastination mode” in
their professional lives, while others do it in their personal relationships. The
annoying thing about procrastination is that even though you are well aware
of your goals and the steps necessary to achieve them, you still remain
lackadaisical and helpless.
Even in ancient Rome, procrastination was disparaged: The great
statesman Cicero, in one of his philippics attacking his rival Mark Antony,
harangued that “in the conduct of almost every affair slowness and
procrastination are hateful.”
The student population has a hard time dealing with procrastination.
They consider it as the killer of dreams, ambitions, and achievement. A
study by Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl shows that students who
procrastinate in their schoolwork are more likely to have health problems,
such as suffering from insomnia, and issues related to diet and exercise. As a
larger problem, many students have committed suicide because they
received low grades or failed exams on account of their procrastination. This
exposes the dark underbelly of academic procrastination.
At the surface level, procrastination may appear as an ordinary,
harmless thing. But there is more than meets the eye. If truth be told, it is a
hazardous, life-threatening addiction. It is more difficult to put the kibosh on
procrastinating than to relinquish boozing, binge eating, smoking, and taking
drugs (not in that order).
The dominance of procrastination
Sixty percent of people surveyed claim to be moderate procrastinators.
Ninety-five percent of those surveyed indicate that they procrastinate
occasionally.

3. Forty percent of people have experienced some form of loss due to
procrastination.
Just over twenty-five percent of people engage in debilitating
procrastination.
Talking about time management, Douglas Adams, a British writer
(who passed away in 2001), was just beating a dead horse. He had a huge
loyalty to procrastination to the extent that he could not complete writing a
book despite having spent a decade on it. He never said, “I’d better get to
work, I have got a lot to do today.” Adams, whose works include The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was a poster boy for procrastinators
everywhere. “I love deadlines,” he once said. “I like the whooshing sound
they make as they fly by.”
Admonition: Start. Continue. Finish.
Basketball luminary
I have always been a huge admirer of Michael Jordan. He faced
crushing failures with a smile and transformed the raw material of them into
his success. Admittedly, he is a veteran of failures. If you do not concur with
me, then read the following quote:
“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost
almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game-
winning shot, and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again
in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.”
- Michael Jordan
Never allow procrastination to block you from ambitiously pursuing
your goals. You may go through a huge ordeal in your quest for success, but
I never said it would be an easy journey. Muster the courage. Believe in can-
do-ism.
William James said, “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on
of an uncompleted task.” How true!

4. Words to forget
(1 ) If only
(2 ) I’ll try
(3 ) Could have
(4 ) I can’t
(5 ) Should have
(6 ) Yes, but
Earth-shattering revelation
Psychologist William Knaus, who has written several self-help
books on fighting procrastination, mentioned one businessman who spent 40
hours of delay time to avoid five minutes of work. Wonder how much loss
he incurred in his business!
Being purposeless, visionless, and directionless can sound the death knell
for your forward-looking journey
Once a young man finished his degree in astronomical engineering at the
University of Arizona and decided to board a train, with no set destination,
to look for a job. He entered a local railway station, approached the ticket
counter, and asked the person at the counter for a train ticket. The
counterperson enquired, “Specify your destination.” The youngster
remarked, “I don’t have a clue. Simply give me a ticket to anywhere.” He
ended up crashing in different places.
In the above case, the young man only knew the starting point of his
journey but not the end destination. Bear in mind that the journey is more
enjoyable and can conclude in the shortest time span, provided you know
where you are going. This is the advantage of having an ambition and clarity
about your future direction.
The trappings of a procrastinator –
(1) Allowing the less significant tasks to get in the way of the most
important ones.

5. (2) “Vegging out” for long periods of time.
(3) A minuscule piece of work snowballs into a titanic task.
(4) Heartbreak due to unfulfilled commitments.
(5) “Today” and “now” are not part of his lexicon.
Procrastinator at work
(1) He has a messy workspace.
(2) His “To Do” list balloons in no time.
(3) He always loafs around and cannot finish his work before the
deadline.
(4) He is bugged by reminders from his boss.
(5) His inbox is inundated with important official emails that he
hasn’t checked.
(6) He is under constant pressure, and is apparently racing against
time.
Baptism of fire
Jace was given a maiden, gazillion-dollar project to be completed in
eight weeks. He thought, “Eight weeks, that’s plenty of time,” so he threw it
in a drawer. A few weeks later, he looked at it again. “Lots of time for this,”
he thought, and tossed it back in the drawer. In the seventh week, Jace’s boss
held a review meeting. He took a potshot at Jace: “What on earth were you
doing all this time?” Jace manufactured excuses and inveigled his boss into
extending the deadline by another 15 days. Jace worked away for hours but
eventually fell short in his project. The boss couldn’t condone Jace’s attitude
toward his work, and cut him loose. (Jace sent a groveling letter of
atonement to his boss, but it didn’t work at all.) This was a major blow to
Jace’s career as he lost a “plum job.”

6. Now is the right time, not tomorrow. If you keep on accumulating
today’s work for tomorrow, when will you do tomorrow’s work? Please do
today’s work today, so you can do tomorrow’s work tomorrow. W. Clement
Stone, who built an insurance empire worth millions of dollars, made all his
employees recite the phrase, “Do it now!” again and again at the start of
each workday.
What did I learn from a horse race?
In a horse race, the first horse may earn a $60,000 purse, and the
second horse may earn a $30,000 purse. The first horse gets twice as much
money as the second horse. This was not because it ran twice as far or twice
as fast, but because it was only a “nose ahead” of the competition. Effective
utilization of your time helps you to remain one step ahead of your
contenders. Who would not want to occupy the highest position in his
profession? Unquestionably, everyone would!
Types of procrastinators
(1) Thrill seekers: They kid themselves into believing that they
work well in pressure-cooker situations.
(2) Avoiders: They avoid dreary tasks. They find it absolute
drudgery to get started on them.
(3) Perfectionists: They keep redoing the same tasks to reach the
“picture-perfect” level. There is always an “I could have done
better” aspect to their thinking.
(4) Overdoers: They deplete their physical and mental energies by
handling multiple tasks at the same time. By multitasking, they
don’t focus on their priorities. They have difficulty saying
“No.”
(5) Worriers: They fear, “What if things do not go my way?” They
are always sensing dreaded things. They are branded as
compulsive negative thinkers.

7. (6) Dreamers: Their minds are filled with ideas that can “move”
the world, but they avoid putting them into action (no
convergence of ideas and actions). “Forming a mental picture”
is their forte. Alas! This alone won’t help much.
Costly outcome from procrastination
A trauma surgeon at Hamilton Health Science Center (HHSC), Dr.
“Xavier,” was at home at 2:30 p.m. when he got the call: “Hurry up doc!
A profoundly hypothermic teen has arrived. Gone into cardiac arrest
during intubation. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation started.” The doctor,
instead of rushing to HHSC (just a 5-minute drive from his house),
delayed his arrival by one hour, and by the time he got there, the patient
had breathed his last breath. This lax action from the doctor forced him to
cough up around $2 million as remuneration—a ballpark figure. As a
larger issue, people lost their good feeling about HHSC (in general) and
the doctor (in particular).
Excuses made by a procrastinator
(1) This task is too difficult to get started.
(2) I can relax a bit today and get things moving tomorrow.
(3) The world will not come crashing down on me, if I do not do the job.
(4) I’ll wait for suitable opportunities to come my way.
(5) I have got plenty of time to do the work.
Replace the above “Excuses” with the following “Success” statements.
(1) I am a person of action.
(2) I get into the work mode right away and slog through it tirelessly.
(3) I am full of energy to do tasks.

8. (4) I am lively, determined, and motivated.
(5) I take action now.
Benjamin Franklin—Workaholic of the first order
Benjamin Franklin was born in poverty and obscurity, but he became one of
the most important founding fathers of the United States. He inspired me to
be like a clock (i.e., I always keep on “ticking” by involving myself in
various things and soaking up new skills like a sponge). Success comes to
people who work like ants. Those who amble along the beach find conches
and shells, but those who dare to venture into the depths of the ocean
discover precious pearls.
Work—The cure for procrastination
Jabari assigned the manuscript of his second book to an editor and told
him to finish the editing by a specified deadline. The editor mothballed the
project in the hope that “someday” he would attend to it. Well, this is
nothing but “protracted inertia.” Time flew by, and the manuscript remained
unedited. Upon realizing his lack of time, the editor at last stepped on the
gas and compromised on the quality of his efforts. This example clearly tells
us that if you increase the proportion of a situation beyond its normal limits,
it becomes the size of a mountain, which would have been a molehill in the
first place. A nugget of truth: No one will come and do the work for you.
You have to push yourself, get the ball rolling, and finish the task.
Inaction = Desperation and frustration.
Sample weekly list of to-do work
Sunday – Go to the supermarket.
Monday – Reorganize the office, which has several layers of dirt and dust.
Tuesday – Pay bills.

9. Wednesday – Return books to the library.
Thursday – Write notes to friends. Note: For decades, a growing network of
scrapbookers in America has refined and updated English commonplace
books and turned scrapbooking into a folk art.
Friday – Online buying and selling (through eBay, a major auction service
on the Web. Millions of items are offered, and billions of dollars worth of
merchandise are sold every year through this service.).
Saturday – Wash car
Work does not burden our mind. It’s the worry that weakens us. And
the worry would vanish if we worked as hard as possible and carried the
momentum forward.
Utilization of time or lack of it
All these years, I wondered how come some people have that “Midas
touch” and others are coasting through their lives. It was a mystery to me.
Not anymore, as I have discerned that the key to their success, more than
anything else, is effective time management. They know when to work, and
how much work is too much in a day. They believe in putting quality hours
into their work. This way, they work efficiently. People who spend time on
inconsequential matters have little time left for important activities. Their
goals are hindered by time constraints. As a result, they are tut-tutting. Many
people have failed not in defaulting on their ability but rather by their
underutilization of time. So wrote Chesterton, “How true, how true.”
Time-wasters
Paola has placed a moratorium on her cooking so as to catch up with her
favorite television series. She parked herself in front of the television and
stayed there all afternoon, not preparing any dishes for lunch or dinner. It is
safe to make a hypothesis that: A person becomes stymied by a time
waster(s). By the way, a time waster is a person who intrudes into another
person’s life. You can identify and sort out time wasters by carrying out the
following exercise –

10. Name of the activity Number of hours spent on an activity
i n a d ay
Sleeping --- --- --- ---
Eating ------------
Commuting ------------
Running errands ------------
Studying ------------
Working ------------
Relaxing ------------
Annotation: I want to acknowledge that we have 168 hours at our
disposal, of which 56 hours are spent sleeping and 50 hours working;
therefore, 62 hours per week are still unaccounted for.
62 hours per week equal 3,224 hours per year.
3,224 hours per year equal 134 days.
134 days of the year equal 37% of the year available.
More than half your time is spent working and sleeping, but that still
leaves you with large chunks of time to do something different.
Managing your time requires an understanding of where your time is
going and how to outline your priorities and define a time schedule and plan,
even if it means changing some of your behaviors and monitoring the
results.
List of time-wasting activities
(1) Daydreaming
(2) Not setting priorities right
(3) Drop-in visitors
(4) Failure to delegate
(5) Postponing decisions

11. (6) Messy environment
(7) Attempting to do too much at once
(8) Telephone interruptions
(9) Menial tasks
(10) Scattered mind
When I saw the area where I grew up becoming modernized and
gentrified, I realized that time never stays still. Time belongs to the category
of air, water, and food. Think about it. How long can we survive without air?
At the most, 3 minutes. How long can we survive without water? For about
2 weeks, depending on atmospheric temperatures. How long can we survive
without food? For about a month. Now, answer this tricky question, “How
long can we live without time?” The answer is—we can’t. Death cannot be
avoided. We cannot rebel at God’s calling us. Nothing is in our hands.
Time is a fascinating thing. We cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or taste
it, yet it is there, in the back of our minds. When people are young and
lissome, time is never a factor. Young people are brash and feel they have
plenty of time in their pockets. The old and infirm are the most susceptible
to worrying about time. “When my time will be up?” is always on their lips.
Stand-up comedians even use old people as the subjects of their dark humor
(blame it on their warped minds). I call stand-up comedians “transmission
specialists”: They can make something, they can fix something.
Conclusion
People who have the proclivity to dawdle will never rise above the
level of mediocrity. A last-minute rush leads to a weak performance.
Procrastination is dangerous territory. It is a never-ending fight between you
and time. What is worse is that by procrastinating, you not only lose time but
it also affects all other spheres of your life. That is why it is often said that
procrastination is not only the thief of time but also the thief of life. Good
news:- People are not born procrastinators. Incidentally, there is no
procrastination gene in the body. Surely the habit of procrastination can be

12. broken. Follow my blue-chip advice: Become determined, put in effort as if
there is no tomorrow and reach the dizzying heights of your life.