Procrastination = 0KMPL

Vision without action is Hallucination.

Many a times, most of us give in to an awesome thing called "procrastination". Generally speaking, anything that is "pro" tends to be positive. So what about procrastination?

Well, it is positive to the effect that it makes you do things that you like at that "moment", irrespective of the fact that it may be the most illogical, time-wasting thing to do. It may actually be taking you farther from your goal, but "who cares" right?

My students and I were in a deep conversation about procrastination when we were talking about the tendency to keep things pending until the last moment, and trying to finish off the entire marathon like a 100m sprint. We also saw this TED Talk by Tim Urban

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator

One thought led to another, and while we were discussing the ill-effects of procrastination, it was on to me to make them understand that procrastination is not good, and how!

kitna deti hai?

I used a simple analogy - the mileage of a vehicle. In India, one question that everyone asks is "kitna deti hai?" meaning "how much does she give?"

Almost everyone seems to acknowledge the importance of mileage that a vehicle gives. The lesser it is, the poorer the resale - thanks to the prohibitive fuel costs.

My question to them was "how cool is 0 KMPL?" You keep the engine running, feel good about it but don't move anywhere. The response was shocking. Suddenly, everyone realized that procrastination does move you one inch towards your goal. It is important to "tune" yourself to set SMART goals, and track them from time to time. As Tim mentions, the panic monster comes only when there are deadlines - it is essential to create those deadlines for ourselves.

In all honesty, this post comes up because I had set a deadline of TODAY for my next post - and I was happily procrastinating all this while :-)