Tag: Procrastination Page 1 of 2

How’s that working out for us in Washington, D.C.?

“How do you feel about the dope problem in this country, Mr. Carlin?”
“I feel we have far too many dopes.” – George Carlin

Indeed.
Forget not ending the shutdown.
Forget about hiking the debt ceiling.
What is going on in Washington D.C., or shall we say not going on, is indicative of one of the biggest problems Americans are experiencing today.
You know what I’m talking about.
By reading this some may say you are engaging in a form of it.
Our leaders in Washington are not setting a very good example to college students like me by doing it.
What I’m talking about is procrastination.
Politicians keep saying they are far from a deal; that is because they waited too long and now they are scrambling to come across as saviors once again.
We need to be able to borrow more money as a country so we can stay in business as a country. That is the way things really are. We cannot pay out anything until we can borrow more again. Businesses are allowed to finance their debt. Why should governments be any different? Let me answer that one if I may. Governments need to be different because Taxpayers John and Jane Q. Public are left with the bill. This is unlike a publicly-owned company where stockholders take a hit. If you don’t own stock you don’t take a hit when the stock price plummets. In the business that is the United States federal government, your “hit” is in the form of higher taxes.
We are supposedly getting representation for all of this taxation. Plus, we are unintentionally being taught a lesson in the dangers of procrastination.
As a college student I know firsthand the dangers of procrastination.
“Put off today what you can do tomorrow,” goes the saying.
Well, that is fine until you run out of tomorrows.
What happens when you practice avoidance, when you bury your head in the sand, is you simply wait for the problem to go away on its own. It is as if we are telling ourselves, “Well, if I wait until tomorrow maybe I’ll figure it out; or somebody else will.”

The way putting off what you can do until tomorrow is being practiced in Washington, D.C. is shameful. They will not pass the “exam” that is keeping their jobs come next election time. Forget people thinking about whether Republicans or Democrats are to blame. I am pretty sure a lot of people are thinking there is plenty of blame to go around. So much so, in fact, that politicians practicing avoidance may cost them their jobs.
Keeping the government from shutting down, re-opening the government once it is shut down and hiking the debt ceiling are all part of the job duties of Washington’s lawmakers and our elected officials—our representatives. They have not gotten anything done so far. And they have waited until the last minute to try working together. Of course working together is never too late, but it is also never as effective as if it were done earlier in the entire process to begin with.
Whenever I come to school not prepared as well as I should be, I accept I will not do as well on the work in class that day. Our lawmakers not only will have to accept they are not getting good grades due to their ineptitude; they will likely have to take an “F” for their most recent mid-term. They simply avoided doing any work until the last minute, and now similar to a student cramming the day of the exam to retain any shred of information they can, lawmakers are resorting to stopgap, “good enough” measures. Resolutions of this magnitude reached in haste will soon reveal themselves to be the barely adequate short-term measures they are.
Procrastination, waiting until the last minute to do things and practicing avoidance are not necessarily indicative of people who are lazy. If you do any of these things you may justify it by saying how much of a rush it is to come up with things or finish projects just in time before a deadline arrives. I would suggest if you come up with something just under the wire, while it may be something of decent quality, it still lacks the greatness that comes from having the time to make editing revisions of one kind or another.
Although I am one to practice avoidance, procrastination and waiting until the last minute…at times…in my case it is sometimes a mixture of hesitancy and uncertainty about the final outcome that can lead to some anxiousness over what to do in the moment. Writing is not without its share of demands time-wise. We have deadlines here to make on any given day, although our publishing frequency is “regularly.” Sometimes we can publish things daily for days at a time. Other times it is about once a week. But since its inception, hittingthesweetspot by Bob Skelley has averaged a post every three days. And while we enjoy it when we can bring you posts every day, sometimes we cannot. We do have publishing schedules we make available every so often on our company page (hittingthesweetspot by Bob Skelley at bobskelley.com http://www.linkedin.com/company/hittingthesweetspot-by-bob-skelley) on LinkedIn. These are commitments we make to our readers and so although we may occasionally procrastinate, we still make our deadlines to the best of our ability.
To the best of our ability
Seal of the United States Department of the Treasury (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That really speaks to the core of the craziness that is happening now in D.C. I know anyone we have talked to feels our lawmakers have not been working to the best of their ability. When that happens (for anyone), it shows. If they truly are working to the best of their ability, what our elected officials demonstrate now is a basic lack of job competency.
In the end, however, something, somewhere and somehow will get resolved. It will probably be deemed satisfactory. It will allow the Treasury Department to borrow what it needs for everything to go on like before.
And therein lies the problem for us all.