I took a walk around a temple called LIFE, enjoyed the company of different people but no one frightened me so much like the guy PROCRASTINATION. He looked so innocent, quiet in a corner by a very large window, a sword and shield in hand.

He looked somehow like a bully, but before I could keenly study him, he disappeared in the tall trees next to the temple, out there.

Tell me your name (first, last or middle), and probably it starts with letter P, R, O, C, R, A, S, T, I, N, A, T, I, O or N – may be a reason why most human beings are so obsessed with this guy. Joking! Let’s put this aside for the moment.

Why do many people spend time procrastinating and not working hard to become successful in life?

1. It feels good postponing doing things we should do now to delay success and achievement. Most human beings like feeling good now than later, plus, we sometimes get obsessed with the less important things we do now so much that we can’t even let a picture of the possible consequences of our actions peep into our big brains.
2. People do like the feeling that there’s still a lot of time for the things they regularly postpone. Most people think that there’ll be plenty of time to do what they don’t want to do now.
3. Some people know that they are wasting time procrastinating, but keep on promising themselves that soon, their habits will change and procrastination will be gone.

Procrastination as a stranger – robbing you of success

But imagine procrastination as a stranger you meet one day in a hotel. God gives you life – say 20 more years of life in the form of an ice cream. This guy, procrastination, cracks a lot of jokes that you can’t help yourself but laugh and proclaim to the world how funny he is.

In between as you laugh and proclaim how funny he is, procrastination grabs your ice cream and lick away five years.

And the moment you decide to do away with procrastination and his jokes, regrets and wishes bombard your system already. Why?

Because  procrastination has licked away 5 out of the 20 more years of life you were given? Will you be proud of procrastination after he does that? Yes. Maybe no.

No, because you don’t know, like many people, that he’s licked away five years of your life (and he never tells you about the amount of time you loose either -just lets you find out on your own later).

You won’t acknowledge the fact that out of the 20 years you were given to live your life the right way, five were licked away by procrastination.

To add insult to injury, you may be confident enough to believe that you will be given another ice cream (read: more years to do whatever you postponed doing) to enable you do the things you didn’t do when you were supposed to do them.

It even becomes hard for you to realise that procrastination can only take away your time in return for nothing – to be proud of.

Your life is important and procrastination likes you alive than dead. Procrastination knows the right kind of jokes to crack to sweep you off the path of progress, hard work, prosperity and making right choices.

Procrastination takes your time in return for…

… a short easy life, which in actual sense is the worst kind of life to live. Why? Because, it’s filled with wishes, regrets, tears, pain, and I know this is not what you want.

Lying on the bed when you should be finishing your assignment isn’t easy life. You get to submit your work late, with lots of mistakes and there’s only one thing that always come to your mind if my work doesn’t get rejected, how many marks will I get (or lose)?

You fail to give priority to the important things in life. You get yourself in misery-land, not wonderland.

So you end up in a cycle where you give more time to less important things and give little time to things that truly matter to you and you get your eyes wet with tears.

You bang your head on the wall, curse yourself, call yourself names…sometimes you end up entertaining suicidal thoughts….

Life isn’t good without having done the things you know you should have done – but it’s better if you start now, better later than never…. Life is a sharp blade of sadness if you let procrastination take away from you things you treasure…if you let it pull you farther away from success.

Once negative thoughts get into your mind – owing to the unhappy life pushed your way by procrastination, it is easy to get yourself into more pain and trouble.

Like getting into drugs, sleeping with whoever wants to sleep with you, not treating your customers well, constantly fighting with your team and building high walls that keep profits from finding their way into your books.

The results are not things that’ll please you.

If you lock yourself in the prison of pain, it’s easy to attract more pain your way. Get help. Don’t self-destruct.

Tell procrastination you don’t enjoy his jokes anymore. Tell procrastination to hand you back your ice cream before his tongue touches it.

Tell procrastination bye forever. Tell procrastination you don’t want his company anymore.

Part ways and live the good life you know awaits you.

It may be hard parting ways. But hey, you better. Why? You don’t want to see your life ruined just by postponing one thing after the other. You want to live a good life. Life isn’t good when procrastination holds the majority shares.

Now is your time to become a better and successful person.

And just before you navigate away from this article, a few things that I would like to bring to your attention:

• I do procrastinate sometimes, too.
• I try hard to fight procrastination to have my space
• And I believe you and me shouldn’t let procrastination be an excuse for average performance at work, in achieving our goals etc. What do you say?

What’s your experience with procrastination? And how has it affected your quest to make a success of yourself?