Dad Said it Best
Age-Old Truths for Modern Times
Last month, I shared how Dad often lagged behind when it came to punctuality. While tardiness was a habit he wasn’t willing to kick, he would often warn against the corrosive effects of procrastination.
“He who hesitates is lost,” he would recite from author Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today,” he would reflect from either Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson (both are credited with penning this one). To sharpen his point, he’d quote Mark Twain, who quipped, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
All this to say, Dad had a tendency to ride the slippery slope of procrastination. He didn’t want us kids to follow suit. Yet, saying one thing and modeling another has a certain power.
Procrastination tends to perpetuate itself in the worst of cycles. Every time you start a new project, you’re already running late because you still have leftover projects to finish first. Since Dad had trouble moving from the prep phase to the action phase, he’d wind up behind schedule.
Periodically, he would take on a book writing project. He would research a historical issue, study all the possible approaches to explain it, and get muddled in the mire of collecting ever more research on the topic. He would write and rewrite chapter upon chapter, getting stuck in a state of indecision; what to keep/what to delete. Before long, the deadline would come and go. An extension or two would be granted, anxiety levels would rise at each stage, and what had begun as a great opportunity would wind up feeling like the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Dad would spend countless nights burning the midnight oil, trying to make up for lost time. Completing a project on deadline seemed an impossible task.
Dad often compared himself to Sisyphus, the mythological tragic figure destined to roll an enormous boulder up a mountain every morning, just to lose grip toward the apex and helplessly watch it roll down again every night. Then he’d have to take up his arduous burden again the following morning, again and forever… the perfect metaphor for a living hell.
I got the message. I just wasn’t sure what steps to take in order to escape the torturous fate of procrastination.
Contemporary self-help guru Tony Robbins has a saying that may have helped Dad out of his rut, but he was just a kid like me during Dad’s time. Robbins says, “Never leave the site of a decision without taking action.” This rule prompts me to take a step — even a small one —to start and maintain momentum toward completion of a project.
If you tend to be a procrastinator, find a way to break your project into manageable, small steps. Then break one of the easier steps into a few chunks. Find the tiniest chunk, and do it now! Once you get that one bit behind you, it generates its own momentum, putting your project into motion. What once seemed like an insurmountable obstacle now looks totally manageable. You’re on your way.
Considering our deadline-driven world, Dad was wise to warn me about the dangers of procrastination. It’s time to put off procrastination, show up on time and maintain momentum toward completion by deadline. Dad said it best.
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