Always put off today what you want to end up doing at either the most inconvenient or most inopportune time in your life. I learned this valuable lesson about procrastination, again, a week or two ago. My daughter’s computer blew up a day before she had to return to University. You remember me talking about student computer safety tip how I wasn’t sure how I was going to give my other daughter a lifeboat in case her computer gave up, well I didn’t have to worry about that, because it blew up at a very bad time for me.
An Example of Procrastination Gone Wrong
As background the computer had been giving my daughter problems from day one and had died at the end of the spring term. I managed to get it back up and running and it had been working OK for the summer, but I should have replaced the disk at the start of the summer, or replaced the system, but I kept thinking it would work just fine, but karma proved that I was mistaken in my faith in HP laptops (have I mentioned they are the Devil’s spawn?).
Did I do as I have been espousing to you good reader? I unfortunately did not and procrastinated, and paid the price later (over $600 for a replacement laptop computer).  I ended up having an extra laptop at home. This non-financial procrastination cost me the ultimate price, money, and that is the problem.
I have written about procrastination and finances but as I age I seem to find the things I don’t want to do always come back and bite me in the ass somehow. This is what ends up happening when you procrastinate on decisions (in life but financially as well), you will end up paying for it later.
The other nice part of this kind of bad decision is that I have hindsight to show me the exact path I should have taken in the first place. Small consolation for the money I had to spend, but a lesson learned.
You know…I just read a few recent posts and wanted to send this tidbit your way: my HP laptop has done the same thing to me 3 times – stopped booting, claiming boot sector absent/destroyed/impaired or whatever….after a bunch of research I found someone else with the problem who suggested doing a full hard reset – unplug computer, remove battery, and then hold the power key for at least 30 seconds (15 is not long enough with my laptop) to drain all reserve power in circuits. It worked perfectly both times I tried it – I had admittedly paid someone else to fix the computer the first time and I am *sure* this is all they did….just in case it works, thought you might think its worth a try…
I lack the technical skills to fix almost anything, so I make sure that everything is maintained and serviced. I hate being at the mercy of the situation. I recently took my wife’s car in for leak because I know so little about cars. The repair was relatively inexpensive.
I totally agree with you. I am a star at procrastination and not doing things that I should do and it usually does end up costing you in the end with lost time or money and added frustration.
So you’re going to fix and sell that computer asap, right?!
Sure, but first I need to to think about it a bit more….