Why dealing with procrastination is really important

Whenever I talk about procrastination with others, the topic and the effect it has on people is acknowledged. But the tone of the discussion quickly takes on a lighter mood. Procrastination is viewed more as a nuisance - something that is to be expected and that will take care of itself eventually, something you will grow out of - rather than something that has life-course altering profound effects. I have felt differently about this in the past two years. I take this problem (which I suffer from a lot too) quite seriously and wish there were more serious discussions and better strategies to bring it under control.

This blog article by Dr. Timothy Pychyl  finally validates my thoughts and is presented way better than I could have articulated it. Some excerpts:

In the course of his discussion of coping with death and counseling individuals who are grieving, Dr. Eliason noted two kinds of regrets that people express in their grief over the loss of a loved one: regrets of commission and omission.

And about the regrets of ommission, the author says:

As I expected given the guilt associated with procrastination, regret over the things these grieving people really intended to do but didn't was most problematic. The regrets of omission related to our procrastination were most troubling in the grieving process.

While it may be possible to forgive oneself for an act of commission, as we all make mistakes, realizing too late in life that you simply failed to take action when you could have, is unbearable in many instances.

This is my favorite thought in the entire article: 

 Procrastination isn't simply a matter of "all-nighters" on school assignments, work projects or our taxes. Procrastination is, quite often, a failure to grasp our own agency in life. It's a life of inauthentic engagement, or lack of engagement, which can bring with it these deep regrets of omission.

I also liked that he wrote about..

....the importance of dealing with procrastination as a symptom of an existential malaise; a malaise that can only be addressed by our deep commitment to authoring the stories of our lives.

I wager that if the total cost of procrastination to human relationships and economies is calculated globally, it would exceed that of any other medical condition whether communicable or non-communicable.

Dr. Pychyl heads a procrastination research group at Carleton University, Canada and the research can be found at procratination.ca