Procrastination?

I have always believed that there is a time and place for everything. To be sure, the time is never now or even today; the place is never within a 100 kilometers of where I am present; and, needless to say, the person to do it is never me. That, however, does not detract from the central thesis - there is a time and place for everything!

Now, what has this to do with procrastination? Well, there are two ways to prove the benefits of anything. One can either directly attempt to list the benefits OR one can list the ills of the opposite to prove the inevitable rightness of one's position. Not that I have always adhered to my own position but that non-adherence is what has proved to me the essential goodness of procrastination.

There is a saying in Hindi that propagates the absolute opposite of procrastination. "That which needs doing tomorrow, do it today. That which needs doing today, do it now." Having taken that for gospel, I adhered to it. For example, I knew I needed to have dinner in the night. So, I ate enough for lunch and dinner for lunch. Of course, you cannot just adhere to your philosophy only once a day - a principle is no principle unless you follow it invariably. So, I ate enough for next day's breakfast AND lunch for today's dinner. This staunch adherence to the principles embodied in that saying should have reaped me rich rewards. It did! I had to change wardrobes - to the next higher size - once every two months AND was also in need of a Gelusil chaser for all my meals. Not quite the rewards that I was looking to get. THAT put me off this stupid philosophy and I became a staunch adherent of procrastination.

Unfortunately, I had also adopted that philosophy in other things. In office, I did what amounted to tomorrow's work today. All that it did was give the mistaken impression to my office that they had given me too little work. Which, in effect, meant that they kept adding to my workload till I could not even do yesterday's work today. And THAT conclusively proved to them that I was an inefficient employee. To think that people suggest adoption of this philosophy to give an impression of efficiency!

I look around at the current generation of employees and see further evidence of the underlying stupidity of this idea. They know that they will need to buy a car tomorrow; need to buy a house tomorrow AND, in staunch adherence to this concept, go ahead and do it all on credit today. Then, they groan through the rest of their lives burdened by EMIs that keep their nose to the grindstone and seeking ever-green pastures of more money. The problem is that everyone is doing it and will continue to do it - thereby pushing up the prices of houses - which, in effect, means that they just cannot postpone their purchase of a house since being late with it would put it well out of their reach. Ah! If only everyone realized the virtues of procrastination.

There is yet another problem with this philosophy. You either start off adhering to it OR you can never follow it. How are you ever going to do tomorrow's work today when the whole of last month's work is piled up for you to do? What is the use of a philosophy that cannot get a late convert? Take Procrastination. You can start off any time AND, no matter how long you have been idiot enough to follow the opposite, you can become an ace-procrastinator within a short period of time.

Ergo - given that the alternative has been proven to be conclusively moronic, Procrastination is the best philosophy. How sad, then, that it, like most of the ideals in life, is beyond the reach of most people!