According to Mark Twain ” Never put off till tomorrow what may be done after tomorrow just as well”. According to the author of this post,  he affirmatively believes procrastination is the grave way that leads to failure. We are all guilty of procrastinating in way or the other. In order for one to move up to the next stage of life and achieve his or her heart desires, ambition, passion and interests in life, he/she must must avoid this great opportunity killer called procrastination.

Its a fact nobody has ever achieved success procrastinating. The desire to start blogging was conceived when I was in my third year (2005) at Madonna University Okija, Nigeria, when I was opportuned to write the principles of success for Mass communication department . Its quite unfortunate, the article wasn’t published as mentioned to me neither did I get it back. Well, the desire and love for putting things down in black and white sprang up again when I was serving my country -Nigeria (National Youth Service Corp). I wrote an article Character- The making of a Leader, a folk offered to publish it on one of the daily newspapers, but unfortunately again, we couldn’t meet because  I was on the verge of leaving the shores of Nigeria to the United States of America.  Arriving into the United States of America, the urge to write and publish  has always been on my mind but, the grave killer of opportunities – procrastination, has never allowed the tree in me to blossom lol.

However, I do believe, at the appointed time, everything will take shape. After so much procrastination, the cup was filled with water to the brim and now overflowing. At this stage, I have come to realize, believe and know that procrastination is meant for failures and lazy people. Its a negative thought all progressive minds should eschew if they want to exceed in life

It should be noted that, there are lots of opportunities awaiting us when we do what we are required to to do. This is because, opportunities normally meet up at the dance floor. For example, assuming you are working in a company and you are given an assignment to do in a company and you were able to accomplish it in record time, there’s a tendency for your boss to give you more work to do and this technically means you are well ahead of your contemporaries. According to Thomas Edison, if we did all the things we are capable of doing , we would literally astound ourselves. Moral: We are the ones holding ourselves back from reaching our goals in life. Again according to Maria Williason, ‘Our deepest fear is not we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”. I believe, given every equal opportunity everybody is a potential achiever, because we don’t have dull brains, we only have brains undeveloped. Procrastination is not of light, its of the darkness family, its so negative that it blinds our eyes to enabling opportunities surrounding us and in turn, giving us the impression there’s always tomorrow, why not take nap, go to party, watch movies, television, have fun etc. How about you think, am I going to live tomorrow? What will happen if I do it today? Who knows what might be available when we complete the task at hand..

The big question now is how do we get ahead with the task ahead. There is not other way than of overcoming this negative spirit of procrastination than taking the day one minute at a time, one hour at a time.  A great way to start is taking one day one day at a time. Don’t over labour yourself and don’t set targets you can’t reach in the name of I want to think positive. Be real on this and take one day at a time, only then can you build on it by majoring on your strength and working on your weakness. According to Mark Twain, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. the secret of getting started is breaking your overwhelming complex tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting  with the first one”.

Finally, when you must have done the needful, you should be able to take a holistic rubric assessment of your daily activities, what you achieved, what went wrong, what you should have done, amendments, way forward etc. These are some healthy positive thoughts can can help us to achieve our goals and only then can we have fulfillment and joy. Procrastination no doubts rubs us of opportunities. It is the number one killer of opportunities. You can imagine, when searching for a job, you have a contact who said to you send me your resume or do the application within a specific time, but you  failed in following up because you feel you still have some time say one day, week, month, etc. Again, let’s say you are in business and your business partners or customers wants a particular product within a particular amount of time, but you delayed in meeting up because you feel you will always nail it at the last minute. How sure are you you will be alive or events won’t pop out when you are ready, supposing your computer crash; your vehicle breaks down; etc. What then will be your fate? Again, you are a student, lawyer, journalist etc and you have a specific deadline to put some information for your boss, clients etc as the case may be, but due to the non-nonchalant and lackadaisical attitude of yours you, failed in meeting there desired targets, there’s a tendency you have to pay for it in the nearest future.

May we never allow what we can do today, see the light of the next day, may we strive to better ourselves each day and we never apportion any blame to anyone or give reasons why we could’t do a particular work.

I will end this post with encouraging words of Margret Thatcher ” Look at t a day, when you are supremely satisfied at the end. Its not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its a day when you have had everything and you have done it. May this be our portion moving forward. Your destiny is your hands and  your are what you think and say! Be positive, be positive, be positive.