Procrastinate

Procrastinate is defined as 'to put off from day to day, to delay, to defer to a future time. As I read this, the word doesn't seem to carry a negative connotation. Then why is used in that sense? Another misused word, quoted out of meaning!

And in today's information overload environment, hectic work-style, procrastination is a necessity, and may be the right thing to do. With more technology, we are able to handle more. But demands have also increased manifold. We allow ourselves to be interrupted and disturbed in more number of ways than ever before. And reminders and follow-ups have become the norm.

If you don't procrastinate, you will have to act on all your deliverables, without assigning priority, and it will require us to multi-task. And there is nothing more inefficient that multi-tasking.

The word 'procrastinate' is so benign, so harmless, even necessary. But its usage is incorrect. However, that doesn't mean there is no problem. We have probably used the word to describe a wrong problem. In reality, the problem we are trying to describe could be one of lack of planning, inefficiency in execution. By using a word that means something else, we are actually misreading and misrepresenting the real problem.

So what do we do about it? Lets discuss that some other day!