Procrastination – Is It Ruining Your Reputation?

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Henry Ford

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

Henry Ford (1863-1947)
American industrialist, inventor

Henry Ford, a man who certainly knew a thing or two about success strategies, once said: “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” How true is that. If all the ‘coulda’, ‘woulda’, shoulda’s in the world were actually things we had done, instead of the things we sit around talking about doing, how much bigger would our current reputation’s look? What separates the players from the spectators? The players have a success strategy. And their success strategy is simple: They are the ones in the game, not the ones sat there talking about the game.

I grew up in Cornwall, and every year we were subject to an annual invasion of ‘grockles’ – tourists, who used to flock down en masse for the 6 weeks of the school summer holidays. Now, don’t get me wrong, ‘Grockle’ is not a derogatory term, it is just that the Cornish, like the Welsh, love to keep their heritage alive, and part of that heritage is their own unique language. With the demise of the fishing and farming industries, tourism (they don’t call it Grocklism) has become the lifeblood of the Cornish economy. And one of the things feeding that economy is the almost insatiable appetite of the ‘grockle’ to take home a souvenir for whichever poor unsuspecting member of the family it is who didn’t happen to make it to our sunny shores for their annual pilgrimage.
What has all this got to do with success strategies and procrastination? Well, bear with me, because there is a point to this rambling, and the point is this:
Do you remember a very strange holiday souvenir that may still be lurking in your attic that looks like a plate and is inscribed with the words: “A Round Tuit”? Now, I was learning French at school at the time, and because I fancied myself as a budding language scholar, I always mistakenly pronounced it “too-ee”, and consequently could never work out quite what the hell a ‘too-ee’ was. It is in fact pronounced “to it”. And on the back of the plate was written the words: “I bought you this because you are always saying you will do it when you ‘get a round tuit’ – well now you have one, get off you arse!” (Actually I added that last bit). But you get my drift.
Procrastination has been called the thief of time. But procrastination robs us of much more than just time. It robs us of our dreams, our legacy, our reputation. What is it your vision? What is your dream? What legacy are you planning on leaving, and how far along the road are you to creating it? Or is that legacy something that you started one summer and then forgot about, left lying now in a dusty attic somewhere?

Are you ruining your reputation because of all the things you are ‘going to do’? If so, isn’t it about time you got off your arse and got yourself A Round Tuit? – I bet somebody you know has one lying around their attic that they could dust off for you!

To your Success,