Procrastination, how does ours affect others?

In my last hub (see link below), I discussed how procrastinating affected us in our daily lives. Now I’d like to touch on the subject of how Procrastinating affects those we live with, those we work with, and those we interact with on a daily basis. We don’t really think about how our behavior affects others because we can’t see their point of view. For instance, if you walk into a grocery store and push a carriage out of your way with a quick shove it’s no big deal, right? But maybe that carriage was the only thing a woman could use to maneuver around the store and you pushed it beyond her reach. Or maybe you stepped up to a counter and reached over a young boy standing there to take the very last chocolate milk on the shelf not even paying attention to the fact that the boy had been trying to reach that chocolate milk for nearly twenty minutes. When we take the time to see things around us, we can actually see how our behavior affects others.

Procrastination is no exception to that rule. When we procrastinate, we believe that it is no big deal and no one will be affected by it. After all, we will get to it, eventually, so what’s the big deal. So what if it takes a day or two, it’ll get done! So what if someone is waiting for it, they’ll get it, sometime. So what if I promised it two days ago, I got busy, but it’ll get done, maybe tomorrow, I don’t have anything planned for then, at least not yet. Do any of these excuses sound familiar to you?

Try thinking of life as a big corporate business—now your boss tells you he needs you to take out the trash before it overflows. You tell him that you’ll get to it in a minute. Three days later, the trash is still waiting to be taken out, because you put it off for so long you forgot, and it has overflowed to the point that it has covered the area around the desks of three of your fellow workers. They must now try to work in a dirty, smelly, potentially disease ridden environment. Is that what you meant to do?

Not realistic enough? Then try thinking of life as a day care center filled with needy children who must be kept safe by you their temporary guardian. You change the diaper of one of the children and toss the diaper to the side thinking you’ll pick it up later because right now you have your hands full with the children. One of the children finds the diaper and opens it. They get sick from the contents and have to go to the hospital, but you were going to throw it away eventually, right?

Still not how it works, you say? OK, let’s focus on real life and see how it works there. Let’s say you live alone in your own apartment. You do what you want when you want and you don’t see why you have to keep the place clean if no one is there to see it. Well, let’s see:

• · Your dirty dishes draw bugs that multiply and spread into the other apartments and your neighbors complain to the landlord
• · Your unclean laundry fills the air with an unappealing odor that neighbors can smell through the closed door and walls and your neighbors have begun to complain to the landlord
• · Your landlord grows even more angry because you keep telling him you’ll pay the rent tomorrow when you have a chance to go to the bank, but there is always a reason why you couldn’t make it to the bank so you’ll do it tomorrow
• · Your boss gets angry because he keeps getting complaints that you have body odor because you haven’t cleaned your suits and you just keep wearing them because they don’t have any spots on them so they must be clean and he won’t let you enter his office for any reason
• · Your electric gets turned off because you keep putting off paying the bill until tomorrow
• · Your car dies on the way to work because you kept putting off putting gas in it and it ran out because, well, I guess tomorrow never came for the gas tank
• · Your co-workers are fed up with having to do your work as well as their own because you always wait until the last minute and then need help to get it done in time so they have begun a petition and have begun to refuse to help you
• · You sit in front of a dead TV because you put off paying the cable bill for so long it was discontinued and you are being sued for the back charges
• · No one lends you money for emergency situations anymore because you keep putting off paying them back until everyone ‘forgets’
• · Your girlfriend/boyfriend breaks up with you because you keep putting off calling them
• · Your car is repossessed because you keep putting off sending the payments in and you’re now six months behind
• · There’s no food in your apartment because you ate everything and put off going shopping until tomorrow
• · There’s no money in your checking account because you put off depositing your check and it got lost in the apartment that you don’t clean
• · No one will lend you things at work like the time your stapler broke and no one would let you use theirs because they said you usually don’t bring it back
• · Your furniture is reposed by the finance company because you put off making the payments until tomorrow
• · Your mother and father won’t speak to you anymore because you put off sending them birthday and Christmas cards and it’s been 5 years since they heard from you at all

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Now, you sit in an empty smelly cold dark apartment with no food, no company, no phone, no TV and an eviction notice from your landlord. No one will sit with you at work and no one will join you for lunch. No one will give you a ride to meetings. No one will help you with your work anymore. No one will loan you anything. No one will help you in any way, shape, or form. And you sit feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t understand why you are being so misunderstood and so mistreated. In the meantime, you are very hungry and can’t even get something to eat because you didn’t wash any pans or dishes, you don’t have any electricity or gas to cook with, and you don’t have any food because you lost your check somewhere in the mess you call your apartment. Hmmmmm, quite the difficult situation, wouldn’t you say?

Not only have you begun to turn everyone around you against you, but you have even turned yourself against you. Is this the way you want to live for the rest of your life? I don’t think so, although I could be wrong. Procrastinating will get you nothing but trouble; but it will also alienate those around you including loved ones.

Do we all procrastinate? Yes, we all do sometimes and we usually have some difficulty because of it. Procrastination gives you nothing but headaches. Am I saying that everyone should be hyper and race around getting everything done immediately? No, that would not work either. We need to find a happy medium, a line somewhere in between where we can relax a bit but still accomplish the things that we need to accomplish. It is not easy to do, but it is worth the effort; not just for us, but for those around us. When you turn everyone around you against you because of procrastination, you have truly hit the bottom of the barrel and I hate to tell you this, but up is the only direction you can travel from there.

They say “time heals all wounds” , but procrastination will make them deeper. So, the next time someone asks you to do something, or you know you have something that needs to be done, don’t wait until it’s too late to do it. Get it done as soon as you can. Make a list to help you remember. Keep the list in a place where you are certain to see it. Cross things off the list as you complete them. And maybe, just maybe you could take a few moments to look around you and take note of the people. You might just gain back your friends, and earn one or two new ones.