The Basic Idea
Have you ever found yourself desperately rushing to get a task done before a looming deadline, only to ask yourself why you didn’t get started on it sooner?
Unless you always get straight to work the second you sit down at your desk, you have likely been a victim of procrastination. Procrastination isn’t simply putting things off. We often are tempted to tackle small, menial tasks that shouldn’t be our priority before beginning the bigger, more important ones. Common forms of procrastination include cleaning one’s apartment or rearranging one’s desk. Despite the knowledge that we need to get down to business, we often find ways to distract ourselves.
Procrastination isn’t the same as laziness. Instead of inactivity, procrastination causes you to do something else before what is most important or urgent.1 While it is a trap that is incredibly common - behavioral science professor Piers Steel has said that 95% of people procrastinate to some degree1 - it makes us incredibly inefficient.
My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
– Charles Dickens, in David Copperfield2
