I will admit to having a mild case of procrastination (when it comes to some things, I am a huge procrastinator). The crazy thing about procrastination is that the reason we procrastinate is to relieve ourselves of some perceived pain that would be endured to complete the task at hand. However, in reality, we will eventually have to complete that task, meaning that not only will we have to endure that pain in the future, but in the meantime we also have to endure the pain of dreading the task! In the end, by attempting to relieve pain by postponing the task, we are only increasing our overall pain.

In my case, this pain came from a broken computer that had been sitting in our basement for 1.5 years. 1.5 years! It was given to me by a friend who didn’t want to deal with fixing it. Everything worked on the computer except the motherboard. I figured I could just buy a motherboard, fix it up, and sell it for a couple hundred bucks. Well, it was an older computer and retailers don’t make it easy to find older parts anymore. This didn’t make me enthusiastic about the fix, so I continued to put it off, day after day. For 1.5 years I had to deal with complaints by my parents to move the hunk of junk out of the laundry room; I moved it from place to place, putting off the fix. Every day for the past 1.5 years, I would see the computer and cringe at the sight. Like Chinese torture, the task ahead slowly ate away at my soul.

What was I doing this for? Was the computer and the potential money from it worth  all of this mental anguish? Finally I decided, NO! I put the darn thing on Kijiji for FREE!. “Take it, get it out of my site,” I said. Within 5 minutes I had numerous people offering to get it off my hands. A couple hours later, it was gone. As if a mental weight had been lifted, I immediately felt better. The large eye-sore that had been bothering me for a year and a half was no longer around to eat at me.

When I look at it now, the computer would have cost me about $50 and ~4 hours to fix. Then I could sell it for $200 if I was lucky. Obviously this wasn’t motivating enough because I let the thing sit around for so long. In the end, I was so annoyed by the computer that I ended up resenting the fact that I agreed to take it in the first place. At least now it will be sitting in someone else’s basement waiting to be fixed.

I guess the moral of this story is that peace-of-mind can be much more important than money. Also, although putting something off may reduce short-term pain, procrastination only increases the overall, long-term pain–you have to deal with it eventually, and in the meantime it’s going to mess with your mind. Do you have a task that has been eating away at you due to procrastination? Share it in the comments.

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