I was playing in a cash game at the Bike amost a week ago, and my friend and fellow poker player Ali Eslami was reading a book right next to me while he was playing a 600-1200 limit game????? That fact, however perplexing as it may be, was not as interesting or intriguing to me as the title of the book he was reading, titled The Now Habit. After reading the quick synopsis on the back, I understood this book to be about breaking that nasty little habit many people struggle with of putting things off for later also known as PROCRASTINATION.

I will be the first to admit that I have been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, dating all the way back to elementary school days when I wouldn't try to come up with what I was going to bring in for show and tell until the morning of, even though that assignment was on a weekly basis so we were given ample time to put a little thought and preparation into it. In high school, it was not memorizing my lines for the play or musical I was in untl the day before dress rehearsal and we were supposed to be off book. In college it was leaving that big 20 page paper that was due as our final for the class until the night before, when we were given the topic and prompt a month beforehand.

And now, after all that I still haven't kicked that nasty little habit. At the risk of sounding cliche, a wonderful and popular quote is "Don't put off for tommorow what you can do today". I am not sure how much procrastination and laziness tie in together, as that might be from a person to person basis, but I know that they are definetely intertwined. It is easy in my chosen profession to get stuck in a cycle, and that cycle often involves being on a much different sleep schedule than the rest of the world. Having the freedom to not work the standard 9-5 and having your "office" so to speak operate 24/7 only exacerbates the problem.

At the end of the day, I can only speak for myself when I say I am unhappy with the fact that I don't self regulate as much as I could. I have many responsibilities and other pursuits which I often put off for a multitude of insignificant reasons but now I am motivated to pick up the now habit and change all that. Sometimes we get stuck in cycles that just turn into meaningless ruts and after a while we are doing something over and over again yet we don't even know why anymore. We want to break the cycle but we are humans and therefore creatures of habit, and don't even need a reason to continue down a certain path and often end up finding ourselves wandering aimlessly.

I know where I am headed, now I just need to hurry up and get there.

/Rant

Sorry. =P