The Stopwatch Never Lies: How I Solved My Procrastination Problem

Procrastination is a difficult beast to solve. I struggled with it a long time, especially as a young adult, until I changed my mental framing of the problem.

In general, most people vastly overrate their ability to do things later. Insight, opportunities, and good ideas are finite, and to be successful, you must aggressively pursue opportunities as soon as they become available. 

Whenever I come upon an opportunity, I tell myself “if this does not happen RIGHT NOW, it will never, ever happen.” If I’m already occupied with something (say, driving), I set a calendar reminder for later that night to go ahead and complete the task.  

This is the branching path I take, with greater preference given to getting the task done immediately, and if I physically cannot do that, the task is to schedule time to do it, as soon as I can. I try and set my personal discount rate to zero.

As Al Davis said, “The stopwatch never lies. Speed kills but absolute speed kills absolutely.”