A Mistake I’ve Made Before, Which I Just Made Again

This article is part of Work Happier, a LinkedIn newsletter from Gretchen Rubin that considers how we can improve our work lives. Subscribe today.

Recently, I released a new book into the world. What a joy it was to write it!

Life in Five Senses?is my tenth book, so I had a pretty good idea about what to expect from the process. Nevertheless, I made a mistake that I’ve made many times before—around book publication and also around other major challenges in my life.

When something demanding looms on the calendar, I start to tell myself, “With ____ coming up, I can’t possibly handle anything else. This task, chore, or problem just needs to wait until I’m on the other side of this big date.”

My sister Elizabeth Craft is a TV writer and show-runner in Hollywood, and she tells me that she does the same thing. “When I’m shooting a pilot,” she explained, “it’s like nothing else matters. I ignore anything I possibly can.”

While I’m letting everything pile up, I reassure myself, “Oh, once I’m past my major obligation, I’ll have plenty of time and energy for all this other stuff.” As writer Elias Canetti notes in?The Human Province, “One lives in the na?ve notion that?later?there will be more room than in the entire past.”

The problem? Eventually, time passes, tomorrow becomes today, and all those postponed tasks crash down on me at once.

To be sure, it’s important to spend our energy and time wisely, and during a crunch period, it’s a good idea to manage the load by rearranging certain tasks.

The problem is that once I latch on to that justification for delay, I tend to put off many items on my to-do list that, in reality, I could have done at the usual time.

Now that my book tour is over, I realize—no surprise—that I’ve burdened myself unnecessarily in the present, because I put off so many things.

To avoid this pitfall the next time I face a big crunch, I’ve come up with three questions to consider when I’m tempted to postpone:

1. Does this task truly demand much time or energy, or do I just dread doing it?
2. Overall, will I save time or energy by doing this task now instead of delaying?
3. If there’s a task I can’t do now (dentist check-up, work meeting, etc.), can I go ahead and put it on the calendar, after my big date?

What are some other ways you’ve found to manage the everyday pressures of work when you’re facing an unusually demanding period? Let me know in the comments.

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