Procrastination: Don’t Let Your Life Belong to Tomorrow
Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods.
It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the power that rules it (to which your part owes its existence).
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
(Marcus Aurelius, 121–180)
One day, a few years ago, a friend emailed this quote to me, as part of a meditation email she’d received.
It struck something in me, so I set it up as a monthly recurring email in my calendar.
I make myself read it and think about it each time.
- What have I been waiting on?
- How have I been wasting my time lately?
- What do I think that I was put on this earth to do — am I doing that?
It isn’t about shaming ourselves for the things we have not yet accomplished.
To me, it’s a reminder to empower ourselves to stop procrastinating and to go out in the world and make good use of our “suspended sentence” here.
procrastinate |prəˈkrastəˌnāt|
verb [ no obj. ]
delay or postpone action; put off doing something: it won’t be this price for long, so don’t procrastinate.ORIGIN
late 16th cent.: from Latin procrastinat- ‘deferred until tomorrow,’ from the verb procrastinare, from pro- ‘forward’ + crastinus ‘belonging to tomorrow’ (from cras ‘tomorrow’).
I try to hustle myself to fight the urge to procrastinate, to make good out of my sentence here on earth, to stop myself from letting guilt and anxiety about my privilege and greed overwhelm me.
In some ways, I’ve done well: I’ve committed my life for the past 3.5 years to traveling and seeing this beautiful world, visiting family and friends (old and new). In the past year, I’ve self-published a book and started releasing my podcast.
But if I’m honest, that’s all just scratching the surface of my ambition.
It’s intimidating (and feels shameful?) to admit all that I’d like to do and achieve. I don’t care much about money — it’s just a tool for me to support myself to do & make more things and a resource for helping others.
My wildest dream would be living a long, productive life that results in a laundry list of creative endeavors brought to life and relationships cultivated over decades.
I recently learned about The Artist’s Way — a book that helps people become unblocked so that they can create (whatever it is they create). I started reading it in London in early October and picked it back up this week.
Fittingly, the chapters I read last night were about how we use our time and money, and all the limiting beliefs we hold about those resources.
I already budget every dollar (and have for over a decade), and I increasingly track all my time (it started for client work but now includes trip planning, writing, podcasting, and my other projects).
What is amazing is how little money it really requires to do most incredible things (my life on the road, for example, has been lived on $2–4k / month, which is far less than most of my peers spend in normal life).
And though it may take me 2–3 hours to write & publish a proper essay here on Medium or 5 hours to edit & publish a podcast episode, that really isn’t so much time out of a week that has (24–9)*7 = 259 waking hours for me to divide between work, eating, travel, projects, socializing (ha!), and relaxing.
It’s really easy to get distracted — to just check Facebook or Instagram one more time, to let text notifications pull my attention away, to make a mountain out of a molehill and not spend 15 minutes making progress on my projects.
But I don’t want my life to belong to tomorrow. I don’t want my dreams and the realities that they could be to exist only in the future, never in my present (or past).
So how will we put our numbered days here to good use, before our sun sets for the last time?
Katherine works remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. Want more? Follow along on Medium and sign up for the mailing list.
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