Procrastination

When would you like to have a hard experience: now or later? While many of us might believe that it is better to have it now, in practice, we very often choose later. Perhaps we hope that later will never come.

An experience comes to mind.

My boss at the beginning of the day asked me how long it would take me to do a task. I quoted it as one hour or less. It took me all day, and throughout the day, I considered telling my boss that I hadn’t finished the task yet. I knew full well that I would, at the latest, tell him at the end of the day, and yet I delayed disappointing him. Why? I didn’t want to deal with that right now.

That was not responsible of me. It was unwise and less than kind to my boss, since now he’ll have to deal with the issue with less notice.

Was this a small issue? Yes.

Does it make me a terrible person? No.

Would it have been so bad to just speak up? Certainly not.

Would it have been better if I’d made the brave choice? Absolutely, and it would have paved the way for future brave choices.

So why do we postpone hard experiences? Is it to live in them a little longer? To have the anticipation linger within us until we learn to be anxious? Is it to push the moments so far into the future that they never happen at all? That is what I suspect. But perhaps we can be brave enough to have the hard thing happen now, so that we can move on with our lives. Perhaps we can have the courage to stop living in the shadow of the hard thing, but to face it and put it behind us. Because sometimes, the hard thing matters so much more than a few extra hours of work.