Procrastination is A Deadly Desease
It seems that the older one gets, the faster time moves past us. In my mind’s eye it seems like only yesterday that I was in high school. That’s what my mind tells me but my body tells me differently. Oh what I would give to relive my life, knowing what I know now. Isn’t it amazing how wisdom helps us view things totally different? I wonder why we don’t have more wisdom when we’re young. It seems that’s when we really need it most, because that’s when we made most of the mistakes that we would change now if only we could. I’m sure you are smarter than I am, and probably didn’t make as many mistakes as I did but I’m very confident that there are things in your life that you would change if you had the ability. I am also very confident that if we will be totally honest with ourselves, we’re still making some of those foolish mistakes today. We have recently made decisions that we would change; after evaluating it in the rears.
We can’t do anything about the things we’ve done in the past. That is now history and it’s only good for our use to learn from. There are things, however, that we can do something about. Almost everyone have great intentions but somewhere along the days of our youth, we learned to procrastinate. Poor time management skills leaves things on our to-do list undone because we run out of time. Let me set you straight on this issue. We didn’t run out of time. We all have the same amount of time in every day. It is our decision; it is our choice as to how we use the time we have. If we waste time; squandering it away doing non-productive things, naturally we will be forced to move the productive things on the list to a later time.
We do pretty much exactly what we want to do. Some will argue that point but did anyone hold a gun on them demanding they do certain things. No! More people than not, don’t even make a list of things they need to accomplish in a certain time frame. But those who do make a to-do list decide for themselves as to which is most important; or we might say, which is most important to them to do and in which sequence. We prioritize everything we do. Therefore if something doesn’t get done in a specified time, it was most likely because we deemed it less important than other things on our list.
Let me confess one of my weaknesses and the total blame is how I prioritize. I have been in church services and learned about a particular person having severe health issues. I would make a note to send them a card to let them know I was thinking of them. The next time I opened my bible, there is the note reminding me to send the card that I never sent. Now it is too late because his funeral was yesterday. I had good intentions to send him a card. My heart was in the right place. I meant to and didn’t, and now I can’t. The problem was, once I got home, there were other things that I wanted to do more than send a get-well card to a sick friend. One might contend that he wasn’t such a good friend after all. Speaking of prioritizing, it doesn’t seem that I have the word of God very high on my list either.
The lesson we need to learn is not to procrastinate. Don’t put off doing today what you can do tomorrow. We are not assured that there will be a tomorrow. If you have a career in sales, regardless the type industry, taking only a few minutes to send a client or a prospective client a card will go a long way in building a lasting relationship. You may not believe it unless you time yourself, but calling someone just to let them know you are thinking about them takes less than two minutes, but it can make the difference between earning a commission or not getting a pay check. I have actually timed agents, in my coaching program, that were making cold calls. They thought the calls they were making were between five and seven minutes. When timed, their calls were less than a minute and thirty seconds. It just doesn’t take long to say “Hi” but the rewards are priceless.
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