DELAYED WORK IS EXPENSIVE.

If you had 300 days to do a task, and you ignore it for 150 days,

When you begin the task 150 days later, it does not get twice as difficult to complete. It actually gets probably 3, 4, 5 times harder!

Let me bring it closer.

If you have 2 hours to write an exam, and you are late by an hour,

The exam does not get twice as difficult to write...

It becomes 3, 4, 5 times harder!

The relationship between work, output and time is not linear. It's a complex relationship tending towards an exponential relationship.

And this understanding is important for us as professionals and productive people who have work and personal life targets.

Our set goals and targets are time bound, and for every time we procrastinate in delivering the work, the work gets exponentially harder to achieve.

It wouldn't appear to get harder, because we imagine it takes a specific time to do the task. However, what makes it harder is the fact that the variables you had in mind when planning continues to change as the hours/days go by.

You may now have new tasks come up which makes the other task become excruciatingly expensive resource wise to embark upon.

As the variables change, the difficulty changes, you now have to "plan" again, repeat things you've done before, effectively increasing the real cost of executing!

But these things look small, and happen in many tiny bits.

However, as you keep having more of these types of delayed situation, your life begins to slow down!

Your productivity will be down. Too many redundant activities. Too many half value activities. Too many activities which would have been very useful last week, but this week has become half as valuable. For instance, a report needed by your boss for a presentation that wasn't completed, now the first presentation of two is done, and you've lost half the value of how you would have been rated if you had the full presentation ready at the right time.

Be cautious of this.

Doing things at the right time has a HUGE exponential value.

Unnecessary delayed timing may give you an adrenaline rush, but ultimately makes your life more stressful, less productive and largely wasteful of resources.

It costs far more to do things at the wrong time (delayed time).

And as with everything in life, there are exceptions. But you already know.