It’s Not the End of the World: When It Might Be Okay to Procrastinate

By Miranda Darling

Procrastinating is a bad habit that every single person on this planet has in common. We’re not terrible people, we’re just human. Even though everyone has come to the general consensus that procrastinating is indeed a bad habit, there are instances where procrastinating is okay, and they just might apply to you.

Whether you’re planning on going to the gym, studying for a test, looking for a job, even waking up in the morning, you are not alone in your fight against procrastination. But a very common underlying reason for procrastination is surprisingly very simple: Whatever you’re putting off is NOT that important to you. If it were, you would’ve done it yesterday. Guess what? That’s okay.

Prioritizing is determining what things in your life to emphasize, and by putting emphasis on one thing, you are automatically putting something else aside, and procrastination occurs as a byproduct.

So procrastinating can actually be the key to solving what is actually important to you, and why that is different than what you had planned for it to be.

If you’re procrastinating your work, maybe it’s time to find something that you are actually passionate about. If you’re procrastinating working out, maybe it’s just because someone is telling you that’s what you’re supposed to do in order to be healthy. And so on. This is telling you to dig deeper into your actions and find purpose in everything that you do.

The point is, maybe you’re procrastinating is telling you how you can improve your life. Don’t avoid procrastination. Embrace it. Figure out what it’s telling you about your life, and what you’ll need to change in order to prevent it.

Now what if you know how important something is, but for some reason, you still can’t bring yourself to take it seriously and you still procrastinate? You realize its benefits, but you still choose to put it off? Well this is also common, and this is also okay because there is nothing wrong with needing a little bit more motivation to do something besides its benefits.

Something that has helped me personally in resolving this issue in particular is not realizing its benefits for me personally, but realizing the benefits for those around me. Finding motivation in even the smallest actions is easier when that motivation is for something bigger than just yourself.

Good luck!

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