Procrastination is the Enemy of Organized Living

You may think procrastination is harmless. But it's not! Minor delays in decision making can have painful consequences for organized living.

The lasting effects of procrastination are that later turns into never!

If you think of yourself as unorganized or if you think of your every day life as out of control; it could be a matter of neglecting to make timely decisions! You could be procrastinating!

Did you know that delayed decision making is a decision in and of itself?

Whenever you put off making a decision about what to do with something or where to put it you have in fact engaged in the decision making process and made a decision to do nothing! And every time you delay a decision about where to put something or how to handle a piece of personal business you are neglecting your obligations.

You cannot achieve organized living when the necessary decisions are delayed... or if decisions are never made.

If you want to achieve control through organized living.......

One of the habits of highly organized people is that they make timely decisions for those "little" things that come up in everyday life. Highly organized people do not procrastinate.

Highly organized people are aware that not making decisions in a timely way can result in the painful consequences of clutter, mess, and emotional stress.

Leaving small decisions unmade at the time they are needed means that you end up with a lot of decisions that that are waiting to be made. Not making a decision at the time the decision is needed does not make it go away, the decision is just delayed.

A habit of procrastination will only make needed decisions pile up. Eventually you will feel completely overwhelmed by the number of small decisions that need to be made and you might even make the decision to make no decision at all.............and so the cycle of procrastination continues!

Every piece of paper cluttering your desk, every piece of clothing on the floor, every piece of unopened mail represents a delayed decision. You cannot control anything if you do not make timely decisions.

So when it comes to those many decisions that need to be made for organized living how do you overcome procrastination?

Just make a decision!

Not making the decision is never the right thing to do. It only delays the inevitable.

Nobody makes the right decision every time a decision is made. But if a decision is never made you will never know if it is a good decision or not.

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For more information on factors affecting decisions needed for an organized life see the section on decision making and using a decision tree.

Go from Procrastination to the article on the benefits of clutter control