Procrastination, a killer of great dreams

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people cannot buy more hours. Scientist cannot invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you have wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow,” - Denis Waitley.

Last week we discussed ‘Entrepreneurship as a young wig’, some who read the article keyed into the concept the moment they were reading it, and forgot all about taking the steps to achieving the feat.

Many have been in situations for too long not because they love the position or place they find themselves in, but because they have always postponed taking the required decision that would take them out of it.

Only recently, I stumbled upon a legal practitioner that is being owed five months’ salary in the law firm he is employed. I asked him, ‘What are you still doing there?’ his reply was ‘I want to collect my money first before I leave’. A close learned friend of mine was in a similar position some months back, always complaining about how he was not enjoying his days at the office, and how he felt like resigning every day, but was not ready as the time was not right.

By definition in Wikipedia, ‘Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. It is the practice of doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, or carrying out less urgent tasks instead of more urgent ones, thus putting off impending tasks to a later time’. In simple terms, procrastination is a silent dream killer, ‘a thief of time’. It has left many legal practitioners stymied in the legal profession.

If you ask me, the best time to do anything worthwhile is today, as no one is guaranteed of tomorrow. It is understood that many factors stand in the way of carrying out certain goals immediately. For starters the environment of the country is not friendly, the pressure of family and society is also a factor that can delay a legal practitioner from taking decisive steps, and then personal limitations which have been placed knowingly or unknowingly contribute to many procrastinating on goals and visions.

The truth of the matter is, no invention ever came into existence without surmounting one or two challenges along the way. Young Lawyers Column will be four {4} years this year because we started yesterday, ‘The Young Wig’, a quarterly magazine designed to enrich the practice of young lawyers spread across Nigeria, is six {6} months already because a team of eight {8} young lawyers decided it was time to change the way information was disseminated between senior and junior colleagues in the profession.

So many have ideas, business proposals, or educational objective on how to improve their practice, but lack the will or zeal to follow it through because of lack of financial motivation, or moral support from those who ought to render same.

A lawyer who desires to grow and accomplish much in the legal profession should learn to develop self-motivation; no one can see the dream better than the originator of the dream.

Individuals are different, and have diverse receptive moods to initiative; some might have thought about the idea before you but could not see it through, and now they only see the reason why the initiative cannot work. Some would-be motivators are alien to the new idea, and cannot comprehend it or how it will work, and so cannot be in the best position to pursue the idea to fruition.

In my humble opinion, aspiring and vibrant young legal practitioners with bright ideas on the future should not let procrastination be the bane to their success. If you see it in your mind, then it is possible to accomplish; don’t let the surrounding circumstances which are only speed bumps on the way to greatness, be the reason why that initiative never saw the light of day.

Godspeed!

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