To procrastinate is to be entitled. It is arrogant. It assumes there will be later. It assumes you’ll have the discipline to get to it later (despite not having the discipline now).
Procrastination is a metaphysical assumption about time and self.
To postpone is to believe the future will be more generous than the present: more energy, more clarity, more courage, more discipline. But the future is not a different environment. It is the same conditions, extended. The self you are waiting for does not arrive. It is only repeated.
Procrastination assumes access to a future that has not been earned and may never exist.
In that way, delay is not passive. It is an active philosophical position, that there will be later, that there will be time, that you will be different. None of those are guaranteed.
- Procrastination relies on a structural assumption: that the future will provide conditions the present does not.
- There was a long period for me where delay felt reasonable, almost excusable, when in reality it was just preserving the same patterns.
- Time itself does not create discipline, clarity, or resolve; it merely preserves existing behaviour.
Assume there is no later.