I am on holiday these days and the university is off till the 3rd of February.
Sitting in my bed, I am typing this blog-post as a confession to none, but myself, that I am the biggest enemy of myself. I exactly mean what I said. I really am my own enemy because I am the enemy of my time, my priceless time. The time which is composed of seconds… In other words, I am the enemy of my seconds that make up my minutes, minutes that make up my hours and hours creating my days, and days forming my years and years composing my life on earth!! As a result of this logical fragmentation of time, we can understand the meaning of time, in fact, the VALUE of TIME!!
We have the option to approach time from two psychological perspectives – time as seconds (the narrow approach) and time as life (the broader approach). Both of them have a different impact on our dealing with our time!! That is, if we approach time from the narrow angle, then we will start considering time as insignificant as seconds. On the other hand, if we observe time from the other broader approach, time means life, then we realize that life must not be wasted!!
In short, the narrow approach tells us that time can be wasted! While the broader approach to time makes us realize that time must not be wasted!
Procrastination and suicide is pretty much the same. The basic purpose is similar in both, that is, self-destruction, only with the difference that in suicide the person wastes his life in a matter of seconds, but in procrastination, he wastes his life, his time, so slowly to catch any attention. The second difference between the two self-killings is that in a suicide, the waste of life is intentional, but in procrastination, it’s unintended. Not even the person committing procrastination himself is aware of this self-wasting, let alone driving the attention of others. By contrast, the typical suicidal person who intentionally wants to waste his life is given coverage by the media, his issue is raised, discussed and the solution is sought. But the procrastinator’s unintentional self-killing has never been an issue. It’s just like how the discovery of a gold mine is something worth to talk about, while the mountains of ordinary stones is nothing so special due to it’s abundance. To quote, around 80% of the total world population somehow suffers from procrastination, which perhaps makes it a too-ordinary-to-deserve-any-attention issue!! But if we ask this general question from ourselves, we will understand how things are insanely going opposite and how our preferences are misplaced: Who should be saved first, a suicidal person who is purposefully wasting his life or a procrastinator who goes into wasting his life without knowing it??
So by that argument, we can derive that there are two types of self-killing:
- Suicide > intentional and quick
- Procrastination > unintentional and too slow to be noticed
It just clicked in my mind that there does exist a third difference between the two, that is, in suicide the person inflicts psychological pain on others and frees himself of all agonies, but in procrastination, the person himself goes through the pain with all else indifferent to it.
Now going back to the first para of this blog, I believe, It’s only a matter of perception that destroys us or makes us stand on our feet, that makes us waste or utilize our time. As I already discussed in detail, the meaning or value of the word ‘time’ is the same; the difference is in the approach. And that difference in approach does not change time itself, it changes us instead. Whether we approach it from the broad or narrow aspect, time is time, but the point to be noted is, our behavior towards time changes and adapts itself with the perspective we choose. — Right here on this stop, another thought just landed on my mind… and this is the most important difference to be remembered!! — The fourth difference, I believe, is that there is no cure for suicide, on the contrary, procrastination does have a cure!!
So let’s talk of the cure!! 🙂
When we think of time in term of seconds, we might take it lightly, in fact, we do take it very light, and thus we get more prone to wasting it. On the other hand, if we consider time as life, our attitude would be more careful about how and where we spend it. In fact, that perception alone would compel us to behave more in a responsible and productive way! So changing our perception is the real cure to it and that needs nothing, but willpower!!
So what is it that has made me go so careless with my time? Why do I undervalue the time so much that it became the cause of losing even the very easily obtainable opportunities? In student life, what else could be the most important job to a student except for his or her studies? Who could be the person who makes fresh plans at the starting of every session and goes on making plans throughout the course until he finally finds out that exams are only a day away?? And still who could be more time-waster and foolish than he, who despite knowing that he has got only 24 hours to start studying puts the book by his side and goes into some random thoughts until he realizes that the clock has struck past 4am and he still hasn’t started yet and is already feeling tired? Who could be more unrealistically optimistic than him that still believes he can finish the whole course spanning a whole semester just in the remaining next few hours before the paper starts? God knows, who on earth could break this record of starting preparation for ”final papers” only a few hours before the exam? No. I am not boasting of anything. This is ”how honest” I have been with my studies and other matters concerning myself for the last almost five years and that is why my graph has gone down. I delay what I am supposed to do till the very last moment when I realize that I am left with no time. For that reason, I have messed up with even very petty matters that were within my grasp.
Months reduce to days, days break into hours and hours shrink into minutes, till the deadlines come, and I still don’t start acting despite knowing all the consequences. With all the required materials at hand, I missed the deadline for an student exchange program. With all the comfort and peace of mind I have, I missed the time for preparation for exams. I don’t want to, I never wanted to, but I missed them … aaah, just leave it, bygones are bygones, no regret at all. Because I and my readers still have it in our hand and we can make it!! 🙂
One out-of-the-context thing I would like to share here is that I am the type of person who never had any fixed schedule. I always wanted to follow a routine with a fixed sleep time, study time, time to spend with family and all in a proper order. For the last many years, I have been drawing timetables/rules for myself, but never had I gathered in me the consistency and determination to follow them. The most I could stick to my timetable or rules lasted for no more than a day. Haha, funny as it is!! 😀 After one or two days, I would again feel lazy and all the enthusiasm would die away like the clouds blown away by winds… Whenever I get this feeling that I am out of the track and that I have to get back on it, the first thing I do is, repenting on the time I wasted and thinking on to planning a timetable that will prove most efficient for me, provided I follow it. But the problem is, as I said, I could never stick to my time plan. Sometimes, I even spend the whole day literally doing nothing. Doing nothing but killing the time. AND killing the time does mean something if we look at it from the broader perspective I explained above!! In other words, killing the time is like killing your life, yourself!!
But this must not be the case after whatever I have written here. The tips I have discussed, I myself must follow them first and apply them to my life before suggesting it to any other. In fact, I am nobody to give tips. The fact is, I had started this blog-post to write about a few documentaries and movies I downloaded and watched during this holiday. But as you see, it turned out to be a totally different article, about things I never thought of before. I swear, haha, I never thought of writing about such depressing things.. Maybe, I wrote it because I was destined to write this and maybe this write-up may do some good for someone in this infinite world.
Anyways, let’s get to the conclusion; CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION and YOUR PERCEPTION WILL CHANGE YOU! Look at your time not as seconds, but think of it as your life. Only then you will value it and only then can we get rid of procrastination.
I hope you enjoyed reading it and I hope my observations/conclusions will be of some help for me and for all my readers. I say ALL, because all of us are partly procrastinators in one way or the other! 🙂
My odd odyssey 
