Waiting is a choice - same as procrastination

I can't remember the day when I finally realized that I don't need to wait anymore, but it was quite a revelation... the type of discover that is life-changing without the drama or tragedy of an accident or trauma.

It turns your life upside down.

Suddenly you never have to wait for people again - with a book in hand or even the dreaded cellphone that never leaves the modern human's hands you now have a choice to do something productive (or at least entertaining) while the person who was late for an appointment is rushing about. And when they finally show up and apologize for making you wait, you smile at them and say: "No need to apologize, I wasn't waiting at all."

In fact, if the meeting was less important, the impatient person who was in a rush to do something perhaps less important might even just send a text message to decline the meeting in a business-like manner: "Sorry, I am going to do something else now." It may be cruel, but with that click of the send message button the waiting time for both parties stop immediately as well.

So waiting is entirely a choice, something that you choose by not filling in those precious minutes of your life. Or perhaps you are just happy to actually have some idle time, to sit back and relax, smell the roses, take a break and recharge. However, wouldn't it be nice to be the person making that decision rather than having someone make that decision for you? Therefore I am the person who brings that book or laptop and so I never wait for someone to arrive.

But what about procrastination? Well that's definitely a choice, but is it one that is not dissimilar to choosing to wait? When we choose to wait for some unknown reason the logic seems to be a little bit different. Procrastination is a deliberate choice not to do something (despite all the interesting reasons someone might throw at you for procrastinating on that 'big/important' project, but you can also think of it as a calculated choice to do something else (i.e. I would rather do this instead of that because it is too hard or I am too lazy).

Whatever your reason for procrastinating, please don't procrastinate on something because you are waiting for the 'right time'!

Choosing deliberating to procrastinate (to do something or to not do something) so that you can wait is basically saying that you are waiting for yourself. Many of these people say things like "I will donate money to charity when I am rich", or "I will help people when I win the lottery". To do best of my knowledge, the people who are truly generous don't wait to help people (and I have another theory about people who accumulate their own wealth before helping others - which I won't go into here).

That being said, I have a meeting to go to now and I hope maybe some of you are choosing not to wait by reading this article :)