Welcome to the keywords of life… apathy and procrastination.

Let me tell you, these two are killers. They kill fun, grades, fraternities, marriages, jobs… and the list goes on. Apathy sucks. Procrastination… well it sucks too.

I’ve been dealing with both of these issues over the past year, not only with my class work, but also with my fraternity. At this current moment, I don’t really have any life-changing or ground-breaking advice… just a bit of a “Come to Jesus” as Mr. Bland would put it.

Apathy – a state of indifference where the individual is unresponsive or “indifferent” to aspects of emotional, social, or physical life. Apathy can be object specific (toward a person, activity, or environment), and is commonly associated with depression. It can also reflect a non-pathological lack of interest in things one does not consider important. (From Wikipedia)

While I am certainly not depressed (I think), I have, upon further reflection, determined that I am occasionally apathetic toward things that I should not be. I have decided that the best way to combat my apathy is to acknowledge it and then force myself to overcome the urge to be uninvolved. This seems to be the best way to recover from a state of apathy (of course if you know of a better way, let me know).

The larger problem arises when groups of people become apathetic or indifferent. This can become a huge problem, especially when seen within an organization that survives by its members’ enthusiasm. Over the past year, I have seen this occur to some extent, and it is something I believe should be addressed. However, as someone wise once said, you must remove the plank from your own eye before you try to remove the splinter from your neighbor’s eye. That, I believe, is the solution to organizational apathy – fix yourself, you fix the whole (or at least you get a long way in the right direction).

This brings us to … Procrastination – the deferment or avoidance of a task until a later time (Wikipedia).

This is more of a personal problem. I enjoy playing, and therefore I will also put off doing important things as long as possible. While this hasn’t gotten me into too much trouble (yet), I need to remedy this before I really get myself in too deep. If you take Matthew and subtract procrastination, you would definitely not have found me in the lab at 5:30 AM the day my Senior Design CDR (and PDR) were due. Yea, I need to work on that.

Any solutions?

Anyway, I hope that you all feel enlightened now. Thanks for listening, and tune in next time!