Time is of the Essence

Procrastination epitomizes our culture's inherent disposition towards laziness. Day by day, the negative connotation corrodes away, as more and more people adapt the mindset Carpe Diem Cras. Psychologically, the phenomenon of putting off even the most basic tasks can be explained relatively simply, as the menacing deadlines imposed on us today limit our perceived freedom, and if there's one thing people hate, it's a threat against our freedoms. Procrastination leads us to ultimately rush our work, and the obvious detriment to this is that the general quality of everything we do is severely limited. Yet, there remains a latent danger involved with a consistency in this type of thinking, especially in our formative years. Every decision we make affects our future in some way, in a ripple effect fashion. The magnitude of the ripple is inconsequential. Every action we perform affects our future thinking in some way to some degree. In terms of behavior, performing a negative behavior prompts us to be more biased towards that behavior in the future, and the same rule applies for a positive behavior. This doesn't mean that if you smoke marijuana one time you will inevitably fall into a life of hardcore drugs, but rather that the act of smoking marijuana breeds a bias towards smoking marijuana, whereas refusing to smoke marijuana breeds a bias against smoking marijuana. Again, no matter how small this bias is, and it varies person to person, it will eventually add up over time. Our beliefs and characters will invariably line up with our past behaviors. The big issue with this is that negative behavior is unproductive behavior, and time is a limited resource we can never recover. Time is the most important resource we have because of that simple fact, because time is the only thing that can never be recovered. We can always fall in love again, we can always make more money. Time, however, should be invested wisely.
Now, everyone has different value systems in life. Some people want to be successful, while others just want to experience life. Everyone has meaning in their lives, because with irrational creatures such as us, even the absence of meaning is meaning. While I do not condone the pursuit of material objects, I am not the person to demand that one conforms to my belief system. You must decide your own rules, and decide how to live your own life. We define our own existence, it cannot be defined for us. Eventually, your clock will stop ticking. After that, your existence will be dramatically redefined, if not completely terminated. Invest this time, every moment of it, the way you want to, fully aware that every action at every point in your life will indubitably affect your future. Work for today to build what you want tomorrow, because when tomorrow comes around, there will be no more today.