The biggest lie that we say to ourselves is “I will do it tomorrow.” The tomorrow never comes. Or rather every tomorrow comes with another tomorrow.

Our time here on earth is limited. We can’t ever say when it is that our time here will come to an end. We can’t ever tell if there is a tomorrow. Yet, procrastination is one of the most common human flaws. Every other person can be caught procrastinating one task or the other.

We are so used to keeping things for the next day that we don’t really realise we are losing so much time today. And we can only reflect on this loss once the ‘today’ becomes a ‘yesterday’. Like Benjamin Franklin said, “You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.”

Just look around. We keep our assignments for a tomorrow that only comes a couple of hours before the deadline—and sometimes even after. We keep pushing our payment dates until we don’t have internet, electricity or water at home. We don’t exercise or lead a healthy lifestyle until we have developed ‘tyre bellies’ that have begun to stick out. Worse, we don’t start eating healthy until we have developed diabetes or a heart disease. We keep delaying projects and stalling responsibilities until the procrastination poses a threat.

We procrastinate not only because we don’t feel the gravity of the accountability but also because we don’t really value our time.

If only we did everything in time, we would save ourselves so much more energy.

By the time we realise that we made a mistake procrastinating, it is often too late to go back in time. We could have done the same task efficiently, effectively and without stress. But no, we wait until the end and compromise on the quality, on the quantity and on our own health by stressing over the consequences we are going to face.

The funny part is we are not ready to own it up. Instead of accepting that it was our fault that we procrastinated and the compromised output was inevitable, we get upset, we get angry and we react. We sulk and whine as we regret the results. We are actually as good at remorse as we are at stalling.

Procrastination is not such a big problem. It can be easily solved by taking up some responsibility and being motivated to complete one task at a time. We can take one step at a time to reach our goals. It is all about internalising that the goal is attainable and not as daunting as we deem it to be.

The more we stall a task, the lazier we get. As time passes, we only get more demotivated.  We are a generation of dreamers. We dream but we refuse to get up from the bed to get things done. We come up with ideas but we rarely ever convert them into actions. We talk but we don’t ever practice what we preach.

It is often very difficult to begin a task, but then again the best way to get something done is to begin. We waste so much time waiting. But the truth is the time will never be just right.

What we don’t realise is the fact that the more we delay tasks, the more they pile up, the heavier they get and the more they weigh us down. Somebody once said, “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

Once you procrastinate there is no escaping it. Once you procrastinate there is no chance that you can escape the consequence.

Laziness is the vice that gives birth to procrastination. Laziness is attractive and it easily lures us human beings. Laziness works like a slow poison that takes its own time to spread into your system. But once it does, it destroys you.

The sooner we realise that the work is more attractive than laziness, doing is more effective that imagining, today is much dependable than tomorrow; the better our lives will become. We need to understand the value of time. We need to seize every moment and live in it. Tomorrow is just a concept, it is an uncatchable bird that will just exhaust you when you start chasing it but will not come in your hand.

Acharya is a student at IoE, Pulchowk