Thursday, July 2, 2009

Procrastinators of the world unite...................Tomorrow!

Half way through the year already! Isn’t that scary? How are your new year’s resolutions going?

As I look back on commitments I made at the start of the year or at various times since then, there is a common thread I notice. It is that while I always fully intend to do good things, I just intend to do them later.

Pray for someone.......later tonight
Start the diet.......on Monday
Read my bible......tomorrow
Write some more blog posts.........sometime later this week
Go to the gym.......sometime before the membership expires

These mostly look like pretty reasonable at first glance. After all, everyone is pretty busy. But they all add up, both over time and when there is more than one thing getting procrastinated. This can be especially the case in spiritual things. It’s not like when you skip the diet, keep eating boxes of cookies- there the consequences of that tend to be painfully obvious. The consequences of spiritual procrastination can be a lot more subtle, but still very much exist. Too much procrastination keeps us as immature and ineffective Christians. I would have to wonder if it is part of the devils strategy that if he can't make us do bad things, that he'll influence us to keep procrastinating on doing the good things so they never happen.

Good intentions are never enough to beat procrastination. On their own they tend to fuel it. I'm learning that if I want to grow spiritually I actually have to make a firm plan. Then I have to act on it, even when it is inconvenient or not the most enjoyable thing to do at the time. I used to at the start of every week write down a list of things I was going to pray for on each day of that week. I think I need to start doing that again.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with a procrastination problem. What are some areas you need to kill procrastination in?