Wonderful Wednesday Words: Procrastination
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today*“ is a common proverb (Sprichwort) in English and the simple message is ‘get it done NOW‘.
* (Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen Leute) By the way, I have never seen this translation before as I know “Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen“
‘Procrastinate‘ is when you don’t (want) do something, leave it until later and (possibly) repeat , until in some cases you NEVER actually do the ‚thing‘ at all.
Everyone has got there own story of procrastination – I put off doing administration/paper work until it becomes an absolute MUST. This is when someone will string me up (jdn erhängen) and I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered (gehängt, gestreckt und geviertelt) . Unfortunately, some people love paperwork and enjoy torturing (foltern)people like me and inventing (erfinden) ever NEW paperwork tasks to boot (obendrein).
There are a zillion (zigtausend) and one techniques, vids, books out there on how to ‘cure‘ (heilen) procrastination and I’m sure you maybe tried, watched or read one or two of them.
Author, Jon Acuff, in his book ‘Finish: Give yourself the gift of done‘ looks into the possibly less focused upon issue (Thema) of actually finishing as opposed to starting. Weirdly enough some of underlying (tieferliegend) reasons for procrastination are actually the fear of finishing something and what this may lead to (zu etw führen). In a very listenable (I’ve got it on Audible) way, Jon breaks down the fear of finishing and offers techniques to get over the fear and to get you to START finishing – if you get the drift (jdm folgen können).
If you are a procrastinator, then don’t hang around, get you scates on and buy the book NOW, just do it (Sorry, Nike).
What’s there to fear?! Worst case secenerio, you just spend time reading/listening to a book in English!