Avoiding Procrastination - Part 9: Conclusion

We could come up with a second batch of 101 tips to get you out of your inertia, but if you don’t at least try five out of the 101 tips we’ve just shared with you, you’ll never be in control of your own time.  You certainly are not expected to execute on all 101 tips.  That would be an impossible mission, too tall an order, and downright an unrealistic goal.

Lester R. Bittel in his book, “Right on Time” (McGrawHill, 1991) calls procrastination an insidious temptation that plagues all of us.  What may appear to be harmless procrastination can turn harmful - if done to excess. 

Procrastination means losing precious time, wasting valuable resources and missing life’s golden opportunities.

Mastering your time and optimizing your resources are excellent remedies for procrastination.  But they’re not miracle cures, nor are they instant therapies.  Only you can manage the absence of productivity in your life. 

You can surround yourself with experts who excel at multi-tasking, time management and all these nice-sounding principles emanating from the Harvard School of Management, but if you don’t act on their advice, procrastination will not disappear – ever. 

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  That sounds almost biblical, but it rings true when we’re talking about Bittel’s “insidious temptation.”

An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.  If you just keep thinking things out without doing, then you’re only cheating yourself.  The doing is the most important.  For it is in the doing that you produce results you want. 

It is in the doing that you discover hidden sources of your creativity.  It is in the doing that you gain momentum.  It is in the doing that you become a refined problem-solver.  And the more you do, the quicker you become. 

You have the means – 101 tips – to banish the devil forever.  Let him play his tricks in someone else’s workshop.  Once you’ve learned not to procrastinate in most aspects of your daily life, success is only a step away.

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” 

Thomas Edison’s words, not ours :)