Is procrastination a friend or foe?

Haven’t we all used ‘I’ll do it later’ at least 50 times in a day for a task that could be done in 5 minutes if we put in our best efforts? Don’t we all just keep delaying or postponing that call to a friend who has moved to a different city or country? Did you also miss the deadline of a project because you thought you could ‘do it later’? This is known as procrastination.

Around 800 B.C. a Greek poet namely Hesiod wrote ‘Don’t put your work off till tomorrow or the day after’. He was rightfully giving caution to the human civilisation to avoid procrastination at all costs. It involves unnecessary delay be it implemental, decisional, or timeliness. Almost everyone around the world has been the victim of procrastination but some of us have got better at it and paved the way for procrastination as our lifestyle. The task or activity has been put off by people, they know deep down in their hearts the fact that they have to face the consequences.

The dictionary definition of the word is ‘to delay, defer, prolong’. Procrastination is derived from joining two Latin words: ‘pro’ meaning forward and ‘crasnistus’ meaning belonging to tomorrow. Forward it to tomorrow which translates into ‘I’ll do it later’ in today’s modern world.

Scholars like Morelli, Schmitt, and Letham have defined various types of procrastination such as realistic, unrealistic, and spiritual procrastination. No matter how many different kinds of procrastination are there in the world, we deduce it makes people lazy and irresponsible in life. Most people have regarded procrastination as a harmful act of self-destruction or a complete waste of time.

The prevalence of procrastination is apparent throughout history with dozens of historical figures including the French author of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo. He is one of the finest examples of procrastination as he suffered through its consequences. In the year 1829, he promised a publisher to finish his book ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ and the publisher never provided Hugo with any deadline because of unconditional trust. A year went by but Hugo didn’t even start writing the book which made the publisher extremely furious. He asked Hugo to finish the book within six months.

To prevent procrastination, Hugo planned a bold strategy. He used to take off all his clothes and force his servant to hide them and only bring them up when he was done writing daily. In this way, he lost the motivation to leave his room without his clothes, which proved quite effective. The book was finished two weeks before the given deadline. The time between writing the book was spent under pressure due to Hugo’s procrastination for a year. If only he’d have started the work before he’d have a fun time writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hence, procrastination can be the thief of joy and can certainly make any enjoyable task exhausting if not started on time.

Procrastination is often related to a lot of psychological issues mostly with stress and fear of success which play a huge role in paving their way into one’s life. According to a professor at DePaul University, ‘everybody procrastinates but not everyone is a procrastinator’. The most common answer on why people procrastinate is that they don’t like the task or they don’t feel like doing it. Everything boils down to emotions.

Most people with procrastination fear the judgement of other people and they fear their efforts won’t be appreciated, so they perpetually avoid looking at themselves from a realistic point of view because if they do so they might face another fear. In a situation like this, they take the help of procrastination as a coping strategy for the fear of failure. People prefer to blame themselves for being lazy or disorganized rather than to view themselves as being unworthy and not good enough which is the deep-rooted fear of failure that they feel so deeply which is eased by procrastination.