THE PUNISHMENT IN PROCRASTINATION
By Jayjay Viray

“The two rules of procrastination:  1) Do it today. 
 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow.”
By Unknown

“Someday is not a day of the week.”
By Unknown

We Filipinos are famous for our capabilities of letting things drag on and on and on until forever comes, what with our “bahala na” mentality and our thinking that there is always tomorrow.  This is not to say that there are no hardworking Filipinos, please do not get me wrong.  If that were the case, then the Overseas Filipino Workers would not be bringing in a substantial amount of our government’s funding and our country’s budget. 

What we are concerned about is promoting the potential that is already there the fastest way possible to help get the best results possible. 

There is that saying: why will you do it tomorrow when you can do it now?  Our parents told us this when we were children to get things done.  It was this mentality that some of us shirked away from whilst others bloomed.  The reasons for this are as varied as the people in the world, but to just examine the saying, it makes a definite statement. 

I can understand the procrastination that follows from a week’s hard work, where you feel your brain is burnt out, you have no creativity left and all you want to do is sleep.  Either that, or get out of your cubicle, your office, your building to go to the mountains or the beach.  Of course it is normal to feel this way.  It is part of working life, which holds especially if you are in the corporate world.  But there are those who are time wasters, who really wait until the last minute to do whatever needs to be done, and though they do in a sense ‘get it done’, the result is shabby and just emphasized more the lack of thought or effort that went into finishing something.  Unfortunately, the world is now also looking for quality over quantity.

It is the idea that there will always be a ‘later’.  The problem is ‘later’ usually ends up becoming a ‘now’.  For example, there are all these little things in every office that need to be done, such as filling out reports or projects, or even researching for them.  These things are small and to some, almost trivial and mundane realities that they have to go through on a daily basis.  These are the tasks that are usually put on the ‘pending’ box, to be forgotten about, until there is more “free time” maybe because there are still many other more pressing things to be done, or simply because employees feel that it can be overlooked, ‘just this once’ and really ‘who could it hurt’, right?

 Well it hurts the way the office machine works.  If for example, you did not file that report at the end of the week, your boss will have to answer to someone else as well, which means that you have to answer to him too.

There are many procrastination methods, and some perhaps are even beneficial to your work, taking that break between the repetitive jobs and assignments, but if it interferes with the structure of operating procedures in your office, then maybe it will be best to think through that 4th coffee break and “just one smoke”.  Just because it is a small task does not mean that it is not important. 

The reason why the markets are competitive is because there is always someone out there who is tweaking what you’re doing and trying to make it better.  If they succeed in doing so, your being unprepared will be wholly apparent.  If you have not read up, even just a few articles or passages, about what the competition is doing for example, or where they may take Product X or Service Z, then you will not know where to go.  And leaving that crucial heads-up for when you’re free will just not cut it. 

Think about it this way: if by chance, you do start off heavy with whatever it is that you do, that is, you take on double time than what you normally do for a week, say, the next will be just that little bit lighter. 

At the end of the day, work is measured by the results shown, not whether or not you’ve put in 5 hours whilst your colleague put in just 2 with hers, because if she gets it done in that time and you did not in yours, that says a lot more about how and the way you work. 

Time is the one thing in this world that none of us have the power to capture again.  There are no rewinds in life, just play, and sometimes even fast forward.  This means that you cannot go back to that one moment where you could change how you could have reacted.  The problem is you would have already realized this only when that moment has passed.  As they say, “hindsight is 20/20 vision” and truly it is.

[Jayjay Viray is the Country Manager of JobsDB Phils, Inc. For more job opportunities, log on to www.jobsdb.com.ph.  For comments, email feedback@jobsdb.com.ph.]