Procrastination is the Thief of Time
It is a general tendency of the human mind to go on postponing a work as long as it is possible. Out of sheer laziness, we go on delaying from day to day. We do not want to set to work because we want to shirk the exertion of body and mind that the performance of work involves. We fight shy of the labour and make lame excuses to cover up our weakness. We say that the time is not ripe for it to be done; that there is time enough and to spare and what is the need for hurry? That we are not in the proper mood which the work requires to be done well and so on. But these pretexts cannot conceal the inertia and lethargy which possess us. It is this which led HG Wells to define man as an effort-shirking animal. Take the case of students. They know the courses of studies prescribed for them. Their teachers are never tired of telling them that they should complete their assignments regularly, revise what is taught to them every day, the same evening. But every teacher knows, to his disappointment, how much his pious sermons are heeded to; and how his students go on putting off till tomorrow what they ought to have done yesterday. And tomorrow the days fly fast. They are stolen away by this thief of procrastination. One fine morning the examination schedule is announced and the students wake up to find how ill-equipped they are for meeting their arch enemy the ‘Examination’, which stares mockingly at their face. They get nervous at the sight of the books which they have never touched. Now they wish they had been more alert and had prepared their lessons regularly. But it is too late. Time seems to have wings and they find it difficult to keep pace with it. And it is not the students alone who sigh for lack of time and mourn the moments that they have wasted owing to this habit of procrastination. Who does not, at the close of his journey of life, regret the cast lot undone because he did not begin it but went on postponing it day after day?
