Is Procrastination Sustainable?

While my husband is stressfully watching one of the last games of his favorite soccer teams season, I keep asking myself why his team put itself in this situation. They are in the relegation zone, and they are fighting to stay at the premier league. They have 7 games to play, and they’ve already played 31 games until now. So, how did they miss planning their strategy and leave all their hopes and their future for the last 7 games? At this point, Aston Villa is desperately hoping to get some points to be able to stay in the league, while we all are praying that the other teams that are in the same situation lose some games. Unfortunately, there is no time or money left to get a better coach or footballers. They have to stay optimistic and still believe that they could do it with what they have.

Leaving things to the last minute is not limited to Aston Villa’s situation; we all do it from time to time. We don’t see the big picture and just try to save the day. Some days, we leave studying for our exams to the last minute, some days, we leave preparing an important presentation to the last minute, or some days, we leave buying an anniversary or Christmas gifts to the last minute. However, as we grow up, our responsibilities and the consequences of our actions get bigger. Not only do we add more stress to our lives, but we may also create a damaging habit for our health. So, if we see a negative trend in our lives, such as leaving things to the last minute and procrastinating, we need to consider changing ourselves and our lifestyle.

Foremost, we need to understand that unfortunate things happen to everyone; the only difference we can make is to find a way to handle them and learn from them. We need to have a plan and a positive attitude because one failure or leaving one thing to the last minute shouldn’t define our remaining actions. It is a learning experience. If we let this one misstep define our future and see ourselves as a failure, that’s what we will get. By thinking this way, not only will we invite more failures to our lives, but we also let stressful emotions take over it.

Recently, I’m taking an online course, which is about how badly we react to negative situations. Last week, the professor gave an example from her life. At the age 29, she developed rheumatoid arthritis because she couldn’t handle the bad grades she had and saw herself as a failure. Whereas the bad results had nothing to the with her future, it was the result of that semester. It was an eye-opening example, because each time I watched her videos, I could see the damage she had on her hands. However, she was very positive and she shared her experience to warn us and used it as a learning experience which gave me hope and power. So, we need to learn to react to the negative events proactively and don’t let them impact our health and the rest of our actions.

We also need to believe that our future is bright and better. We all need to learn to reset our minds to prevent ourselves from ruminating on past events. It may not be easy, but the health professionals say that it is possible to train ourselves. If we let one failure define our future actions and let our procrastination become a habit, we will invite more failure, even long-term health issues.

At the end of 90 minutes, Aston Villa lost another game. It may be too late for them to turn things around and stay in the premier league. However, we can learn from them and stop procrastinating. We can still have some success when we leave things until the last minute, but it is not sustainable to live this way. Instead of delaying things and creating more problems for ourselves, we can take small steps and start taking actions against anything that we are procrastinating. Once we get started, we will see that it is not as tough as we think.