The question we are considering this week on our foray through the oh-so-common world of procrastination is about committing:
If I don’t do it now, then when? When will I do it?
How often have you talked about something, dreamed it all out, created a wonderful vision for what you are going to achieve….and then run out of steam, or life events have got in the way and you have not achieved that vision? Perhaps, more brutally and harshly, you simply have not followed through on your plans to create a tangible reality from the dream.
Ouch.
But when it comes to procrastinating – putting off that which we said we are going to do or need to do – a simple, bald question to stop us in our procrastinating tracks is this:
If not now when?
This was famously said by JFK, apparently to inspire people to take action now and not wait for someone else to step up, although he was quoting Rabbi Hillel from two millenia ago.
But it applies as much to our theme of procrastination. If I don’t do this now, when will I do it? Do I believe a quieter/easier day is coming? Or that I will be more motivated tomorrow?
Or is it that I need to wait until sufficient panic has set in before I am triggered to take action?
In a wonderful TED talk that I was introduced to entitled Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator, Tim Urban talks about the twin forces at work here with procrastination:
- The rational decision maker, who is logical, focused on completing the task, and motivated by long term benefit.
- And the instant gratification monkey who immediately jumps in to thwart those plans and distracts us with anything that is more pleasurable in the short term.
The serious point he makes at the end of the talk is that when there is an actual deadline for a task we are putting off, then the procrastination is self-limiting and it’s effects are contained. We simply HAVE to finish the task by the deadline and that rising panic prompts us to take action.
What is much more insidious is when there is no deadline to prompt us to take action. And to add insult to injury, it is more likely that tasks without a deadline are those with greater impact on our lives: our fitness, our health, our relationships, our own character development, our career.
This ties back to a series I wrote some time ago on death bed regrets. Not achieving that dream because we simply never got round to it can be a source of great regret and sadness. And this is even more so if someone else is involved.
Perhaps you know that getting more exercise or eating more healthily is important for your health but you are putting it off.
Maybe you are miserable at work but are putting off setting up your own business despite having talked and dreamed about this for years.
There is that lost relationship that you have always regretted and still grieve, but you are stalling on getting back in touch for fear of what might happen.
Or you know that having a technology free day will improve your mental and emotional well being but you are too easily distracted by Instgram so you’ll start tomorrow…
Then ask yourself, if not now when?
How bad will things have to get before you DO make that change?
And, as we talked last week about motivation, who else is invested in this decision? Who would benefit from you being healthier/happier/more fulfilled?
So perhaps this week, take a few minutes to consider some of the bigger impact tasks on which you are stalling. What is the cost of NOT doing them? And if not now when?