Procrastination and Me
Shaikat Islam (Stuyvesant High School)
Without any regard for anything going around me, I sit on my plush desk chair and I begin my cycle.

The snow white screen of my monitor surges a temporary relief into my body as I begin to browse. I click. I
check my email. I watch some YouTube videos. I watch more. More. I check my email again. I go on
Facebook. I wait. Then, the relief absconds, leaving behind an undesirable: agitation. I look around for
the source of this restlessness- out of nowhere; my schoolbag suddenly makes it into my line of sight. Oh.

At this time, I try to make a decision: “Now or later?” but before I reach a sound conclusion, temptation
and lethargy redirect my attention towards the screen. The cycle repeats, and the ability to work is
superseded by the thirst of entertainment. As a high school student carrying the weight of his future, I dared
not say the word- p-p-pro- procrastin- procrastination. Out of all students, me, a Stuyvesant student,
procrastinating? Without even knowing it, I had been conditioned; conditioned for procrastination.

Although I try not to admit it, procrastination has become my dogma, my disease: my fault.

Unfortunately, this disease also affects 70% of American students, according to the American Psychological
Association, and students are not exclusive to it: from 1978 to 2007, 27% of the American public thought
of themselves as chronic procrastinators, while in 1978, it was a meager 5%. I chuckled to myself-
America, the country with the greatest GDP, a nation of procrastination. Insomnia and schoolwork don’t’ go
hand in hand, but they burned a lot of my time, so I began doing what I did best: browsing. I searched the
Internet for ways to mediate my procrastinating, and in the process gained lots of information on
procrastination, and found methods, which to no avail, could not help me. Then, I found something new,
something fresh: kaizen.

Kaizen means “improvement,” but has evolved to be translated as “continuously improving”. The
term “kaizen” began in Japanese business after WW2, where the economy of Japan lay in shock, after
having surrendered to the Allies. The ideas that would serve as a base for kaizen came from a joint
operation between Emperor Hirohito and allied occupation forces. The head of this operation was W.

Edwards Deming, a statistician whose work granted him an award from Emperor Hirohito and inspired the
creation of the Deming Prizes by the Union of Japanese Science and Engineering (JUSE). I began to relish
in these facts: Deming must have created something awe inspiring; something that worked.

Kaizen has since evolved greatly from post-war Japan, with Toyota changing it to implement it in
their factories, but its key characteristics: standardization, waste reduction, and problem solving, still stand,
along with its most unique characteristic: variability. Kaizen can be implemented in corporations, by
individual people, in life therapy, and even health care systems. A NY Times article shows how the Seattle
Children’s Hospital transformed from being unreliable and a place where “nurses…would stockpile stuff”
in a makeshift manner to a simplified area where supplies where stocked efficiently. Variability also exists
in time lapse. Contrasting from a New Year’s Resolution, kaizen can work with both short term and long-
term goals, in lieu of one long-term goal.

Kaizen has many forms, as stated before, but much of the modern kaizen comes from the evolution of
Toyota’s kaizen system. This is why kaizen, when used personally, may remind someone of an automated
factory. Nonetheless, the key characteristics still remain: Problem solving- Take on the smallest problems
first, creating initiative to solve bigger problems later. Waste Reduction- Organize your thoughts effectively
and error proof your day. By error proofing, I mean finishing a problem and thinking of ways it could’ve
been solved even faster. By organizing, you also reduce waste, which increases productivity by allowing
more work to be done in a short time. Standardize and Automate- Man takes on machine! Make your tasks
automatic and standard, as if in a factory. As you practice, this becomes easier, and there you have it.

Japan has always been self-improving. Its post economy after WW2 had skyrocketed like a miracle,
and more recently, Japan showed incredible progress after the Tōhoku disaster. Japan serves as a model for
anyone, showing that self-improvement, even in the worst of times is still possible. As we go into the New
Year, add kaizen to your resolution. I know I will, maybe later.

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