The Idea That You Can Do It Later

The Idea That You Can Do It Later Is The Reason To Do It Now

I heard this great saying, and knew I wanted to go deeper into the idea.?"The idea that you can do it later is the reason to do it now."??What happens if you say that you will do it later instead of now??Whatever it is then has two places to live in your mind instead of one. That is not concentration, it's ambivalence.?You've set yourself up for a host of bad stories about how you really should be doing it now, and you know it, and a whole wagon train of excuses comes over the horizon, compounding the situation.?You become the defender of procrastination, as it is eating up the supplies behind you in the wagon.?Your time is being gnawed away while you figure out how to not do the thing that you said you would do.

Procrastination is a common problem, and excuses are the way it keeps going, sucking away the creative force to nowhere in what I call the black hole of creativity.?I wrote a whole book about this, The Essential Excuse Handbook: 77 Ways to Keep From doing Anything at All.?Let's use one excuse right now to see how this works.?How about #32, "It's too big for me"??This is you saying that you feel you will really need to take some big and uncomfortable steps in order to do something.?You don't want to do it, so you make yourself too small.

Now, you're allowed to be small if that's what you want to do. Fine, as long as you are aware of it and not telling yourself those stories that you are "going to do it later".?Not every idea that comes along is right for you.?Think about the overall purpose of the project, and frame your response in terms of that.

Is this something you absolutely must do??What's the advantage in putting it off??Is there one??Usually not.

?Make up your mind, and either do it, and do it now (or as soon as you possibly can), or decide you aren't going to do it, let it go, and move on.