Professor Mason Cooley wisely said, "Procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder."
I could not agree more. If I had to narrow my pet peeves down to a manageable number, I would have to put procrastination at the top of my list. It drives me crazy when things are put off until the last minute and then have to be rushed through.
A study conducted by Delaware State University found in 1978, 5% of the population admitted to being chronic procrastinators. Today that number has risen to 36%.
That number may be low. Remember, these are people who just admit they are procrastinators. There is another whole group of folks who procrastinate but will not admit they do it. It seems that a ton of people put everything off nowadays. Even though we have advanced greatly with technology for some reason the procrastinators of the world still cannot find the time to get things done.
The D.S.U. study found another number that I feel is more accurate when describing the number of procrastinators in this world. The study suggests that 40% of people have experienced financial loss due to procrastination. That seems about right.
Had an interesting example of this when trying to hire a receptionist the other day. First off, she was over 15 minutes late for her interview. However, I overlooked that issue and still conducted an interview with her. She seemed capable of handling the job and I scheduled a second interview at which she would need to prove that she had a valid driver's license and a dependable vehicle.
She never showed up for the second interview. Well that is not completely true, she did show up but it was about a week after the scheduled interview. Oh, wait, it gets even better.
When she came in, she proceeded to tell me that she did not have a driver's license or for that matter did not own a car of any sort. However, she still wanted the job because she was sure her boyfriend would be happy to drive her to work every day. When I asked her why she did not have, a license she said she had been meaning to get to the D.M.V. to get it renewed but just had not gotten to it. I asked her how long her license had been expired and she said eight months.
Needless to say, she did not get the job.
Of course, I have been accused on more than one occasion of being wound tight so I could be overly critical of the procrastinators in the world. In fact, a story on the website http://www.careeraddicts.com identified the top procrastinators of all time. The winners were Frank Lloyd Wright, the Dalai Lama, Leonardo da Vinci and Bill Clinton.
In the words of the website, "In history there have been procrastinators that managed to make a name for themselves. These people practically made a career out of promising to do everything tomorrow, and in reality, it is incredible that they even managed to function at all. They might be famous, but that didn't stop these people from getting distracted at work."
I must admit that is a pretty impressive list of procrastinators. I wonder what the world would look like today if those folks had been more focused, dedicated and punctual. Maybe I should reconsider and give the young woman a job. Who knows, I could possibly be dealing with a future president of the United States. After all, being "distracted at work" did not hurt Bill Clinton, did it?