Procrastination: How I conquered the thief
Procrastination seems to me to be the greatest thief of time and killer of potential. My dictionary explains it as one, the act of putting off, delaying or deferring an action to a later time; two, Slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it.
Most times, we get overwhelmed and intimidated at the amount of effort we need to put in the task that we automatically think that we do not have enough strength to see it to the end, so, we push it to a later time when we would have the strength. The sad truth therein is that we’ll never have the strength.
At other times, we may bring ourselves to believe we do not have enough resources, or rather, enough time to see the task to completion. Again, the truth remains that we do not have and can never have more time, we’re stuck with the eternal 24 hours daily. For some of us, it’s just plain laziness.
I get a lot of people coming to me and asking for books to help them with procrastination, I myself had one time searched for such books (you’ll be stunned at how many there is). I did get them, but they didn’t help, no amount of pep talk or motivational speeches will help either.
Now if you know me well, you’ll know how I always have a book for every problem, but one thing I’ve come to realize about procrastination is that no amount of reading can cure it. You’ll even be surprised that you’ll put off reading the book to a later time until you never get to read it.
To put it short, one simple antidote I’ve come to realize to cure procrastination is to ‘Do’, — add action to the reading — it doesn’t matter how tedious, complicated or simple the task may be, Just ‘Do’ It! I’m sure you’re familiar with that slogan.
I know you might think it too simple and too basic, or maybe you’re saying I don’t understand how hard it is. Well, one other thing I discovered in my experimentation with procrastination is that we’ll realize how easy the task was only when we start. It is always not as tedious as we imagined it to be, and even if it is, the joy of completing a task is so satisfying!
You’ll be amazed at what you can do when you discover some peculiar things about yourself as you start ‘Doing’.
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