The verb posponer , also accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) as postponer , refers to placing something or someone after another thing or individual . In this way, what is postponed is given a lower value or importance .
For example: “You shouldn't prioritize work and postpone your family” , “The coach postponed the Argentine player again, who was not called up” , “If you are going to postpone me again, I don't want to continue in this relationship” .
The term comes from the Latin postponĕre , formed with the words post (which translates as “after” ) and ponĕre (translatable as “to put” ). Its most common use refers to not performing an action , with the intention of carrying it out in the future .
To postpone, in this context, implies to delay or put off an act or event . What is postponed is not cancelled or annulled: it is simply postponed : “The lawyer asked to postpone the start of the trial due to the defendant's state of health” , “Although we dream of having a child, my wife and I made the decision to postpone parenthood in order to concentrate on our professional careers” , “The referee was forced to postpone the start of the match due to bad weather conditions” .
Suppose a young man plans to celebrate his graduation by organizing a party at his home. At first, he invites his friends and family to attend the gathering that will take place on Saturday. However, two days before, he falls ill and a doctor tells him that he must rest for at least a week. Faced with this situation, the young man decides to postpone the celebration until he gets better.
The act of postponing or putting off obligations that becomes a habit is called procrastination . It is an "evil", so to speak, that can come upon us at any time in life and prevent us from achieving our goals, leading us to believe that we cannot act otherwise. But this is not true.
Postponing activities that are required of us at school or the office, or even those that we impose on ourselves as part of our personal projects, is not only the worst way to proceed, but it can be avoided through different exercises based on self-determination and willpower . No one is like this for life, even if they have had this tendency for years or decades.
The problem may have its origin in different preconceptions, which depend on the personality and experiences of each individual. Some decide to put off their obligations for later because they are so afraid of not getting there on time that they become blocked and cannot sit down to work. This case is the most common, and it is masked by an endless number of justifications that reinforce the decision. On the other hand, there are those who do not want to be aware of the difficulty of what they are postponing, but instead make themselves believe that "there is still plenty of time"; when the time comes, however, they realize that they will have to race against the clock to finish.
We should not forget to mention situations in which the thing that is postponed is a meeting, especially a leisure meeting, with friends or family: a possible change of date is not the same as the habit of putting off a meeting with people we supposedly want to see for later . In the face of this tendency, it is important to review our personal relationships to find the causes, because it can only exist if there is an underlying problem, something that we have not resolved with one or all of those people we avoid so often. As mentioned above, postponing is not cancelling, and therefore sooner or later we will have to face the conflict .