Procrastination – An Expensive Life Style!

Happy New Month!!

Is the month still new? A lot seems to have happened locally and internationally.

Procrastination is not a new area of human interest; organized people may even refer to it as a human disorder. Irrespective of your point of view, no matter how you define procrastination, Procrastination is an expensive habit/trait or character to maintain. I pride myself as an organized being, so why do I procrastinate?

Many years ago as a branch staff, I had issues with my phone and on this fateful day, I missed an urgent call from my then Branch Manager, who was engaging a customer. On arrival, he engaged me and I shared my predicament, his response was simple and short – “Oscar, phone! It is either you can fix the issue or you are replacing it, it should not linger. There are more important battles ahead”, I attributed his response to his financial status. Rationalizing, I lost the importance of the charge and attributed his feedback to his financial status.

Over the years, I have come to realize that some issues demand decisiveness. Yet, I still find myself procrastinating at the expense of my finances most times, which is the reason for my indecisiveness in the first place to manage the finances.

Organizations have started budgeting or completed budgeting for 2025, the purpose of this write-up is to encourage you that no matter what you do, do not carry forward/carryover procrastination into the new year. Inflation is currently at 32.7% as reported by the Central Bank of Nigeria vide https://www.cbn.gov.ng/, prices of goods and services are not at inertia!

Permit me to share my mishap with you: A Change Agent (always checking out new products &services) friend of mind called to inform me of an insurance company offering affordable insurance plans for new and existing phones & gadgets, the premium was realistic and affordable. He impressed it upon me to sign up as most of the existing service providers currently focus on new or high-end phones, this was something for the masses. Moreso, I currently use a phone brand adjudged to have one of the most expensive screens, it is market-gist that the screen is the most expensive component of the phone. One would have thought that an offer to buy a device protection policy/plan would have been executed without delay but I hesitated and went ahead to surprise myself.

Guess what I did? I shared the information with friends and family, and got them to buy a package from the Service Provider whilst I waited for the best time to pay for my plan - this had nothing to do with the money, I just needed the weather or an event to prod payment. Little did I know what was ahead of me - a week later, I was trying to multi-task when my phone slipped and the screen shattered. I stood motionless for some minutes before I picked up my phone. As expected, they showed me shege pro-max and still sold a fake screen to Me.

As the one who got everyone to buy the package, my friends waited patiently for me to share feedback, my predicament was a test case to validate the investment in gadget protection. Thankfully, whilst waiting for my feedback, a friend on the plan lost his phone and the claim was honored without hassle - it was yet another moment of reflection for me. There are stories of people losing expensive vehicles because they opted for 3rd-party/no insurance instead of buying a comprehensive insurance plan or something that protects them reasonably, often I have described such people in the banking hall as the evidence of the saying -penny-wise but pounds foolish!

Lessons learnt, never again! I hereby find myself guilty of Procrastination in 2024 and do promise to change. So whoever is reading this article is my witness that I, Oscar do solemnly swear to Do (act) and review-less (analysis-paralysis) in 2025, God help me, amen!

Thanks for creating time to share in my pain, say no to procrastination!