So I'm 24 today I don't feel old or anything but it seems like only yesterday I was 18. Anyways, I thought it was going to be a pretty uneventful day because I am visiting my family in Kansas City, (as of 3 days ago I am an aunt ) but my brothers just put a crap ton of alcohol in front of me and it's only 11:53 am ...here we go...

My Physiological Psychology Professor gave us this link and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you feel like learning about the chemical interactions of drugs at the synaptic level of neurons in the brain via mice at a party Click Here

I am quite the established procrastinator, so I decided to reexamine this trait from the perspective of existential psychology. I have been a big fan of Viktor Frankl ever since I read Man's Search for Meaning several years ago. As someone who accomplished a great deal in his life, he spoke about the damage that procrastination causes to living a life not wasted. Although I can procrastinate with the best of them, I am aware of the simple fact that a future is not guaranteed to anyone; so really, we cannot afford the luxury of procrastination. Because death is an ever present possibility and an eventual inevitability, procrastination is essentially an unconscious way of denying death. So, if I am aware of this, why am I still just as big of a procrastinator today as I was when I first encountered these ideas?

After recently revisiting the existential impact of procrastination, I realized that I previously viewed my habits in relation to my life purely on a global level. For example, at 23 I feel relatively accomplished in becoming who I want to be and in creating meaning and purpose in my life. I have very actively sought out things that I want to do and experience, and I am proud of my accomplishments and direction thus far. From this perception, procrastination does not appear to have a negative impact on my life. I am not denying the reality of death because I take advantage of opportunities based on my understanding that "you only have one life to live" and, as a result I feel that I am on target for creating a life not wasted. However, as I start to break my life down and think about procrastination on a day to day level, I realize the very real impact it has on truly living my life to the fullest.

Viktor Frankl countered procrastination with two principles: do everything as soon as possible and do the unpleasant things first. I mention this because my procrastination centers around not adhering to either of these principles, and when I examine the implications of this on a more local level I see the negative impact of my seemingly innocent procrastination. I put things off until the last possible minute, and even when I attempt to start something early, I usually find ways to distract myself and I tell myself that I can do it tomorrow. While I get things done on time, it puts me in a very stressful situation when I have several things that I need to have done in a short time frame. Not only does the added stress have a negative impact on my life, but I am sure there are things that have suffered in quality because I have less time to spend on each individual task. Along the same lines, I also see how I inevitably lose time when I put off doing something like cleaning. The more I put it off, the messier my place becomes; so, consequently, I spend more time cleaning than if I had taken care of it as soon as possible. Existentially, although I am not putting off big life opportunities, I am still working under the assumption that I will not die before I get the task done, ignoring that I have no guarantee that assures this justification. My procrastination tendencies come out in full force when I am facing a task that I really dread. I can find all kinds of things to do, including other tasks that I have been putting off, in order to avoid something that is unpleasant to tackle. Thus, the obvious advantage of adhering to Dr. Frankl's second principle, to start with the least appealing task, is that the probability of procrastinating is diminished simply because those are the tasks that are at the most risk of losing to my procrastination in the first place. Another brilliant aspect of this principle is that it inherently positively reinforces NOT procrastinating through the satisfaction and relief from being finished with the most unpleasant task. From an existential standpoint, we tend to refuse to accept the difficult, dirty, tedious tasks in life, distracting ourselves instead with more amusing activities so as to avoid them. However, we must all accept our fate, and that includes taking care of the unpleasant things in life. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it: "amor fati." Love your fate.

I have realized that, despite feeling on target in life, I need to incorporate Dr. Frankl's principles into my day to day way of being. The following thoughts I had while processing this are really at the core of my deeper understanding of the price of putting things off. Procrastination is essentially a refusal to be present to what life demands of me right now, in this moment. It is an avoidance of presence, an escape from mindfulness into mindlessness. The sobering truth is that life comes only one day at a time, and how I decide to use each day is how I decide to use my life. Each moment of evasion or procrastination consequently claims the next. In this way, my whole life may be lost, one day at a time...