The Product of My Procrastination

It’s that time again! I have a final project (an 8-10 page paper) due tomorrow night for my Business Finance class. This is the last business class I have to take before I finish my bachelor’s degree next semester! I’ve come to realize that upcoming final projects mean procrastination will be in full swing. While I should be writing about the steps the company in my case study should be taking, I find myself ten times more motivated to write anything and everything other than what I should write. Viola! A blog post is birthed!

While this is productive procrastination, procrastination is generally something that should be avoided. Wikipedia defines procrastination as, “the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the “last minute” before the deadline.”

We may procrastinate because, as is the case with my final project, we feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the task at hand. Or maybe, we’re just apathetic or lazy. It’s one thing to manage our time and have a specific time frame for the completion of specific tasks, but it’s another thing to put it off by saying “later”. The problem with procrastination is that it is a complete gamble. We are avoiding or neglecting something today and determining to do it at a later time that may or may not be given to us.

Proverbs 27:1 says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” This proverb mirrors James 4:13-14 which says, “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

We have no idea what tomorrow holds, and there is a danger in putting things off until tomorrow.

Procrastination can be a threat to more than just the completion of homework or other tasks. Procrastination can hinder us from becoming.

James 4:17 makes this little bad habit of procrastination a little  more serious than we might have perceived it to be. James writes, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

As flawed human beings, there are areas in us, our lives, or our relationships, that could use some improvement. Maybe the improvement seems difficult or time consuming. Maybe we don’t feel up to the effort it will take. Maybe we know our attitudes and actions need to change, but deep down inside, we don’t want to change. Maybe we know that our relationship with God is not what it should be, but we “don’t have time today”. We procrastinate. We don’t do what we should do. We allow procrastination to keep us from becoming the people God desires us to be and our relationship with Him from being what it needs to be.

Are you procrastinating on anything?