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with Kathleen Gibson December 31, 2008 Put off procrastinating for good By the time you read this, 2009 will have arrived on your doorstep or made itself at home in your day-timer. But as I write, it�s December 23rd. Most of my Christmas cards are sitting beside me�not yet addressed. My presents�bought only yesterday�are there too, unwrapped. I called a florist earlier today to order a gift for my parents, for a Christmas Eve delivery. �You�re late, you know,� she reprimanded. �I know,� I said. �And I used to be a florist. I should know better.� �Yes, you should,� she said, but she filled the order anyway. I confess that in certain areas of life, I�m an expert in the fine art of procrastination. I�ve had years of practice. (I should have made that confession years ago; I just never seemed to get to it!) I learned early in mothering that procrastinating can save a prodigious amount of time. If you leave children�s overlong pants in the sewing pile long enough, they�ll eventually outgrow them, and the job won�t be necessary. It works with adult clothing too. Fight the urge to fix, alter, and otherwise adjust your glad rags, and they�ll eventually go out of style, making that job too, unnecessary. And did you know that if you leave your dead car in the alley long enough, someone will eventually haul it to the scrap heap for you? Or that if you skip an annual chore�say, washing walls�it�ll take you the same amount of time next year, saving both bother and time? And if you don�t plant those spring seeds, you�ll have the freedom to sit and sip iced tea while your neighbor hoes weeds! Would you vouch for me as a worthy candidate for the Procrastinator�s Club of America, please? Their official motto is �Anything worth doing is worth putting off.� And their website proclaims: "If procrastinating was bad, they wouldn�t have put the pro before the �crastination�! How I wish it were true. But procrastinating creates more headaches than it relieves. Most of us are caught somewhere in its noxious cycle. Leaky faucets? Over-filled garages? Stacks of unopened mail? Overdue movies? Not much �pro� about those. The worst aspect of procrastination is that it too often affects lives, not only things. Last-minute sermons (or someone else�s, regurgitated) don�t feed people. Follow-up calls never made may bring irreversible consequences. So may unfulfilled promises, unspoken apologies, unexpressed gratitude, unconfessed sins. No time, you say? For years, my life verse has been the prayer of Psalm 90:12 �Teach me to number my days, so I may gain a heart of wisdom.� Numbering one�s days includes taking careful stock of what must be done, and doing it. How do we win over our areas of procrastination? By weighing our commitments against what actually fits into the waking hours God gave us each day. Start by asking for his help to do what must be done�and by doing it, now. Will you join me in 2009? � Kathleen Gibson, 2008 Respond Home |
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