Procrastination does not make a good friend.

Well, firstly allow me to apologise for the 2 days in between this and the previous post. Now, I could say that I’ve been mightily busy or over-worked etc. Whereas, the truth is that I hadn’t a clue what I was going to write in my next post so I put it off. Convincing myself that this would just be a week-nights weblog and that nobody would read it regardless of when I wrote the next entry. To a certain extent I was right.

Procrastination: the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time and is often linked to perfectionism.
(I must state at this point that procrastination in my case is more due to laziness than perfectionism! And also that finding relevant images for procrastination is near impossible.)

There are times in our lives when the inevitable and the desirable are worlds apart. Times when we would give anything to be somewhere else, doing something different. And occasionally during these times we manage to get our own way. We fake illness, we run away, or (more commonly) we simply put off the undesirable until later.

This, unfortunately, is common in my life. I tend to lack motivation for anything that does not enthrall me or benefit me directly and instantly. I am, in this respect, very much like a chinchilla. I lack foresight and have excess cheek space. I find it hard to sit down and do something, for example, if the deadline is weeks, or even days, away. With college work I guess that some putting-off is inevitable and normal. But In my case the things I do instead of work are frankly pathetic.

History essay on the topic of “The Role Of The Girondins In The French Revolution” vs. Gears Of War on Xbox 360. Now, if I were a committed student there would be no choice, but alas I am not. Not only am I lacking motivation, but my choice of replacement activity has absolutely no utility whatsoever! So is there a difference between putting-off work do do something worthwhile (by which I am not referring to Xbox) and putting off work for the simple reason of not wanting to do work?

Yes. Procrastination for procrastination’s sake (or for the sake of anything less worthwhile than the original task) is laziness. Putting off a history assignment to save the lives of orphans in a developing country, for example, is less procrastinating, and more prioritising for the greater good. So I have now found my excuse to put off doing things I don’t want (or am simply too idle) to do. I’m doing something for the greater good.

Unfortunately this is the heart of my problem. Instead of cracking on with the task in hand I spend more thinking up excuses and justifying it to myself. It wasn’t uncommon for me in my earlier years of high school to not do a piece of homework, but then spend hours that evening thinking of a waterproof excuse to give the teacher for not having done it. Estimated time doing work would take – 30 minutes. Time taken thinking about work having not done it – 2 hours. And even though the numbers didn’t add up eventually this became routine. I’m now so practiced at convincing myself that things can wait that I, at times, find it impossible to motivate myself.

And would you look at that, I’ve entered a loop! The more I procrastinate the more it becomes acceptable. The more acceptable it becomes the more I procrastinate! So how do I break the loop? That’s not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know.

Having read all of that through I’ve realised that I haven’t really made a point, and I haven’t even made it interesting. I guess for me the fact that I actually wrote anything is significant. I tend to set up this sort of account, write one post then leave it alone for…well, forever.

So I’m sorry this is a crap post. I shall endeavor to have some interesting thoughts tomorrow. And I shall try to write every evening this week! Possibly with the exception of Thursday which will be the last day of school. (ok, that was added on Thursday evening – really not in a writing frame of mind. Sorry!)

Sorry again!