Procrastinating: The Art of Killing Time
By: Om Ferias
Tags: Killing Time, Procrastination, Wasting Time

You don’t need the infinity stones to make time disappear

Do you clean your room without waiting for it to turn into Chernobyl? Do you study weeks before an exam? Do you write your research paper with plenty of time to spare before the deadline? If your answer is ‘yes,’ then Marvel has just found yet another superhero — you! Too few have the strength and resiliency to not get influenced by the formidable power of procrastination.

“He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” (Ecclesiastes 11:4)

Well, there’s absolutely nothing wrong spending indefinite amount of time observing the wind and watching the clouds. That is, if you happened to be a meteorologist. But if you’re not, then there’s a problem. Take yours truly for example. Before I could come up with the first few sentences of this blog, I had already watched 30 minutes worth of NBA highlights on YouTube; and I have been constantly catching myself staring at a wall. That’s right. Procrastination made staring at a wall more interesting and worth while than actually finishing my tasks. I literally went:

Me: man, I gotta do this at 6:00

Time: 6:03

Me: oops! too late! gotta wait until 7:00 now

Before you judge me and start asking yourself “why do I even bother myself reading this when the author is probably in a much deeper mess than I am?” I would just want to share to you something interesting I got from most researches (ok, you got me there, it’s not most researches, it’s all researches) on the psychology of procrastination. That is, everybody procrastinates. Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, and LeBron James procrastinates. Even the best guy in class during my college days procrastinates. He kind of blurted out a couple of times, the most reassuring phrase you’ll ever wanna hear, “I haven’t started yet either.” I do it, you do it, everybody does it.

If everybody’s doing it, does it mean it’s ok?

The answer is a resounding ‘no.’

“Though we are in the world, we are not of it.” (John 15:19)

Procrastination is the act of postponing making decisions and/or finishing tasks. At its core, it occurs as a result of our inability to self-regulate our behaviors, which means we don’t do what we intend to do.

Where do you reside?

Decades of research on the psychology of procrastination shows us that we procrastinate for a menu of reasons. We either feel that we’re low on energy, that we’re not motivated, that we’re depressed, that we’re indecisive, that there’s just too may distractions around us, or that our goals are abstract. Reasons why we procrastinates varies from one person to another and often times are not obvious to us. But whatever the reasons may be, we must all be cautious as procrastinating has devastating effects.

We might not realize, but as we allow ourselves to procrastinate time and time again, it becomes a habit — chronic procrastination, and will have the power to steal our dreams and destroy our lives.

The guys at lifehack.org have provided us with 8 negative effects of procrastination, but I summarized them into 4.

Ya think?

Procrastination will make us blow opportunities. Opportunities are indicators of God opening doors for us to receive more from Him. Unfortunately, these doors are open for a period of time only. Do yourself a favor and grab them while they’re there. Procrastination will make us unable to meet our goals. Procrastination comes in full force whenever we entertain the thought of wanting to achieve something. We set goals because we have a deep desire to make our lives better in some way. The desire is there, yup, but we just can’t make that first step. Procrastination prevents us from meeting deadlines and achieving monthly targets. This could lead to us missing out on promotions or worse, we could very well lose our jobs. Procrastinating can pretty much ruin our careers. The fourth and in my opinion, the most devastating effect of procrastination is that it makes us waste precious time.

listening to music happily — remembers obligations — listening to music stressfully

There is one thing in our lives that we can never reacquire once its gone. It’s time. Time is such a unique concept because it is a God given gift that if steward correctly, contains the ingredients to success, growth, and happiness. If there’s one thing that we all have received equally, it is time. When we wake up in the morning, we are living seconds that we’ll never get back. God is expecting us to utilize this gift wisely, to utilize it in making ourselves and our surroundings better. Wasting time is a sin.

The apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5:16 that as Christians, we ought to “make the best use of our time.” Moses says in Psalms 90:12, “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” The devil comes to steal our time, kill our dreams, and destroy our lives. I believe that one of his main weapons to do those is to keep us busy procrastinating, binge watching episodes on Netflix and scrolling our Facebook timelines instead of being really productive.

Every time we procrastinate, we should ask ourselves, “what am I doing with my time?” What we do with our time is what we do with our lives. There is too much at stake for us to waste our lives procrastinating. There are too many people that God has called us to impact for the devil to get us stuck in Netflix, Facebook, or 9Gag.

Lucky for procrastinators like me and you, God is concerned with even the most intricate details of our lives and that if we ask Him for help, He’ll always give us hope.