Procrastination

A wise man once said "Don't put off until tomorrow something which can easily be pushed off into next week or even the one after." Ha ha ha. Well guess what I did earlier this week. I went for a dental appointment a day early by mistake, bucking the procrastination trend. It was the knock-on effect of disorienting betwixtmas days.

a procrastinator's dream

Seriously though, folks, isn't it human nature to try and defer doing things that one really doesn't want to do, tasks that might be anything from mundane, through boring, difficult, to perhaps downright unpleasant? 

Of course, if they don't absolutely need doing, especially if no one else is inconvenienced, then it's a different matter. But if they will have to be done at some point, procrastination usually only serves to raise stress levels, unless thinking time is genuinely required. That's why we have deadlines. It's 9.45pm on Saturday night as I type this, and I need to complete and post my blog before I go to sleep.

A former work colleague rarely read or responded to emails. I was shocked to discover he had over a thousand unopened messages in his inbox. His rationale was that if something was important enough, someone would come and talk to him. In the end, it was and they did. He was let go..

When I mentored people in project management techniques, I used to recommend they read 'Eat That Frog', by Brian Tracy. It propounds the theory that one should always start the working day by doing the most difficult thing first (rather than a whole load of less-challenging items). It not only gets that tough task out of the way while one is most energised, it also removes the need to worry about it. Everything that comes afterwards is easy by comparison. And if there are two frogs, always tackle the biggest and ugliest first. It's an empowering approach.

I sometimes wonder if D.J. Trump read 'Eat That Frog' as part of his less-than-illustrious B.Sc. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He's certainly not given to procrastination, except when it comes to releasing the Epstein Files.

If the Democratic Party hadn't procrastinated about replacing Joe Biden as party leader, and if the liberal left and centre in the USA hadn't been slow to grasp the implications of a possible second coming of Donald Trump (particularly in those key swing states) then maybe a different future for the world might have opened up than the dystopian times we have now.

Could it be that Trump and his backers know that his own days are numbered, on health grounds?  For he seems to be in a rush to grab as much as he can as soon as possible, and to aggrandise himself as speedily and as far as the world will allow him. Maybe he should be building a mausoleum and not a ballroom!

The unprecedented events of this last week mean that I had no option really except to write a poem about the enfant terrible himself. His FIFA Pacifier didn't work for long, did it?. He's back in full tantrum mode, it's shocking to see, and those shockwaves are reverberating around the globe.

(artist unknown - all credit, though)

The USA has always been a bit of a swaggering bully of a nation, but version 47 possesses none of the mitigating features of previous regimes and makes no attempt to disguise its nakedly acquisitive and self-serving agenda.

Dr. Spock was an American paediatrician who wrote one of the best-selling books of the 20th century in 'The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care'. Fred and Mary Trump clearly never read it, even though by all accounts their son was a difficult child. Trump senior just threw money at the problem. Donald was already an indulged, entitled millionaire (in inflation-adjusted dollars) by the age of eight.   

Anyway, here's the poem (with the usual caveat that I might revise it if improvements occur to me). The important thing was to get it said and out there, without procrastination.

Bully In A Diaper

You all find it hard to fathom
how somebody with such tiny hands
could rip up the rule book.

He should have been hooked
years ago when he was ‘merely’
a loathsome pussy-grabber.

For history shows that a monster unchecked
will grow insatiable in his narcissistic greed.

Now he’s set on snatching whole lands
for all their worth, black gold and rare earth.

Indulge him and there’s surely worse to come.

Every redneck Christian with a racist heart
and love of a gun has got his bible and back.

Those fossil-fuelled barons at his shoulder
will happily see the world burn for dollars!

In the ballroom of his vanity
the man-child is on the rampage
for a prize he never got

and he’s fouling all America
with his nursery crimes and shit.

This has got to stop.

Happy New Year? Let's hope so. Thanks for reading. Steve ;-)