Right from my childhood I have been told that procrastination is not good. You should not postpone actions, they told me. If is worth doing, it is worth doing now, goes the saying. We have similar saying in Hindi which goes like 'Kal kare so Aaj kar, Aaj kare so ab' (a part of Kabir Doha), which means, if it need to be done tomorrow, do it today. If it need to be done today, do it now.
Like most of us, I fall pray to procrastination once in a while. And every time I procrastinate, I feel terribly guilty. Every time I go to a place of prayer, the one prayer that I always chant is "God, give me strength not to procrastinate". Despite my prayers, I procrastinate...
And feely guilty.
That is why, when I heard that this book ' Wait: The Art and Science of Delay', is about Productive Procrastination, I was curious. When all my upbringing has told me that Procrastination is bad, how can the author of this book, Frank Partnoy, tell us that Procrastination is productive, I wondered. On thinking, I remembered a few incidences from my life where, had I procrastinated the outcomes would have been better. For instance,
- I could have waited a bit before impulsively purchasing that dud of a share. I could have done some analysis and found the obvious mess with that stock. Ever since I purchased it, I have observed that the share prices of the company are affected by Gravitational pull.
- I could have waited before selling that stock and found that immediately after my selling that stock, the stock touched stratospheric highs
- I could have waited before I clicked the 'Send' button in my email
- I could have waited before tendering that apology to a situation where I was perfectly justified in getting irritated.
There are many instances in our lives, where, if we had waited a bit, the outcomes would have been much different and better.
That is what this book is all about as I understand from the reviews. I have not read this book, but I intend to..
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