Last week I blogged about the hidden negatives of the ‘do it now’ narrative. After I wrote it, I continued contemplating the subject and realised — well, it’s not totally a one-sided concept. Like I said in the other post, the reason ‘do it now’ is such a common thing is precisely because the point is to ‘start it now’, instead of ‘putting something off’.
The sooner you start something, the sooner it gets done. This is a true fact! Especially when something has a lot of steps involved in it, the sooner you start getting those steps done, the sooner you’ll get to the end of them. There’s value in promptness, because if you never begin, you’ll never end. You’ll never progress, either.
Except: those three little words, ‘putting it off’. The corollary to ‘doing it now’ is that everything that isn’t done right away is ‘put off’. But is it?
Productivity language is important. It’s how we shape our perspectives on scheduling, time spent, the value of our hours, and our ability to forgive ourselves for failing. Offhand, and bearing in mind that I haven’t extensively researched this, I can’t think of any language which supports the idea of not doing something immediately. ‘Put off’ sounds inherently negative. It’s a denial, an evasion. Scheduling might count — but even scheduling often comes with a caveat of ‘put it in your diary now, right now’. Scheduling is like budgeting: for a tool that’s supposed to make things easier, it feels more like a noose. It’s something that highlights how you fail, instead of how to help you succeed.
This is one of my favourite blog pieces about that — not because it’s about scheduling per se, but because it focuses on the life you’re living, not the one you think you are or want to live. YNAB also goes into this principle, but with dollars instead of time (no specific links, unfortunately, their blog archive is Big and nearly all of it is worth reading). This kind of attitude awareness helps with the scheduling — or not being afraid of scheduling. I always thought diaries weren’t for me because I simply couldn’t use them long-term. I didn’t find them useful; I couldn’t muster the continuous desire to list things in them. These days I use a bullet journal, which, due to the fact I can make it look whatever I like and in formats that serve me instead of me serving the diary, I’ve found I can, in fact, schedule.
I’m lucky. I found my way to what works for me. But in productivity language, scheduling means something specific, and to which we have specific reactions. Just like budgeting. Because, for most people, the standardised assumptions just don’t work. And those standard assumptions include the idea that not doing something immediately is ‘putting it off’. Hello, vague sensations of guilt, shame, and inability.
My point here, I suppose, is that the language we use needs to change, and the mindsts need to change with it.
Doing it now isn’t always possible. Starting now is often a benefit: but how someone starts is unique to them. Doing something later is often valid and needed; and that means it isn’t always putting something off.
And, above all else, continuing from whence we begin links the two. It’s the most important part, because it turns the ‘now/later’ dynamic from binary into scaling. Realise that everything you do is a span of time, not a single moment. That means you can’t do it now, because some of ‘it’ must be done later. It builds, invisibly, until it’s no longer invisible.
What is ‘it’? You name it. Art. Skills. Thoughts. Desires. Plans. Money. Nothing is ever an isolated point in time. This is why splitting activities into chunks comes so highly recommended: it turns something big into smaller, easier-to-digest pieces. But our brains also don’t want to work that way. Often, all brains see is the whole, not the sum, and how many of them there are. Pitting ‘now’ against ‘later’, instead of using them complementarily, exacerbates that tendency.
I’m doing covers training with WMG and Dean Wesley Smith. I have been for the last three weeks, with three weeks left. They already have an October module out for enrolment, and I seriously considered doing that one instead of the September one, because September at the time ‘felt too close’. I wanted more time to think, to plan. I didn’t, and I’m glad, because that would have been putting it off. When the reasons amount to ‘I’m scared to invest’, when you know it’s something in which investment is going to happen, ‘doing later’ is ‘putting off’.
But last blog I mentioned there were a number of ideas I had which clamoured to be heard, and I felt anxious about getting them done. Guess what? I didn’t do them right away. And they still got done. Because I knew the value of what I was already doing in those moments, and I trusted my future self to come back to those activities at a time which was more appropriate for them.
Timing matters. The timing for one thing will be ‘now’, and the timing for another will be ‘later’. The trick is telling the difference, and being gracious enough to put the ‘later’ things down, or finding management techniques which work for you to enable the putting-down. Act now, when you can, to help your future self: but when your present is already full, trust that your future self can pick up the slack.
Life is a series, not a standalone. Don’t be afraid to leave your life narratives for another time, if the ones you’re already living are enough.
I’m a new indie writer-publisher and blogger, which means I need all the support I can get! If you want to help me out, you can buy me a coffee at my Kofi page.
Aurichalcum Publishing 