Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today? Would you lose so much precious “texting time”, or miss out on ten minutes of your favorite TV show? Would focusing on the need-to-do’s rather than the want-to-do’s completely unravel civilization as we know it? I would have to disagree. I believe that things should never be put off.
“We are leaving this house in twenty minutes whether you’re ready or not!“ Last year’s vacation started out much in the same way, except twenty minutes turned to thirty, thirty turned to forty-five, then forty-five into an hour. We missed our plane, no surprise there! All of this pandemonium and commotion was due to my good friend procrastination. Three days before the trip, while everyone else was packing and getting ready, I decided to go catch a movie with some friends. Surely I’d have time to pack later! The next day was a friend’s birthday party, and the day before the trip I “just didn’t feel like it”. Eh, no big deal. Our flight was in the late afternoon. I would definitely have some time tomorrow to pack. But it turned out one of my dad’s close friends wanted to invite us out to lunch before we left. I, being me, couldn’t pass up such a great opportunity. I do love food!
So there I was, twenty minutes before we had to go. Not packed, and NOTHING ready. But by golly we weren’t missing our flight…again! Putting things off turned out to be a pain in the butt; especially since I was on vacation and half the wardrobe I was going to take with me was still sitting at home in my closet!
But my procrastination habit didn’t stop there! When I think of school and the unpleasant things about it I can pretty much come up with three things: homework, tests, and cafeteria food. Setting cafeteria food aside I’m left with tests and homework. (Even though I wish I could set those aside too.) Who would want to study for a test that’s worth ½ of your final grade, or work on a homework project that’s worth 300 points? Nope, not me! I’d rather text for four hours straight, or be on myspace all night. That’s exactly what happened with my finals last year. Sure, my “social status” increased, but was it worth nearly bombing the biggest tests of the year? I think not.
Just like you can’t change the answers on a test after you’ve already turned it in, you can’t go back in time and do stuff you didn’t get a chance to do. “I promise that one day we will skydive from the highest plane and scuba dive to the bottom of the deepest oceans…and any other type of diving you can thing of!” My grandfather was an adventurous man, but a busy one at that. He didn’t literally mean we’d jump off a plane, or go touch Nemo. He just meant that we’d spend time together, alone, doing fun stuff. Shortly after, he fell ill. The only “alone time” we had together was in and out of a hospital room, then soon after that, not at all. We put it off. We never got the chance to have that bonding alone time, and we never will.
“You should never regret the thing’s you’ve done”, or in this case, haven’t done. I’ve learned that you need to make time for both things you want to do, and more importantly, the things you need to do. And as expected, when I do get the need-to-do stuff out of the way, the want-to-do stuff is more relaxed and as a result, more enjoyable.