“I will do that tomorrow because I am a less valuable person tomorrow.”
While this is not what most people think when they procrastinate, I believe it exposes an important truth behind procrastination.
When you have something that needs to be done and you decide that you will “tackle the project tomorrow” you are saying one of two things: you have something of greater urgency that must be done today or your time is less valuable in the future than it is now.
If the former is true, awesome! Time to get to work on your first project. If the latter is true, my question is this: are you increasing in value and progressing every day?
Progress is not doing the same thing every day. In order to make progress, we must be doing more each day. Not in the sense of physically fitting more into the day, but every day should be moving us toward creating more value. In our lives and in others.
Every time you decide to put something off until another time, ask yourself if it’s because there are more pressing things to do, or if you are devaluing the time of your future self.
If you can get to the point where you truly believe your time tomorrow is more valuable than your time today, it becomes much more difficult to procrastinate. If it’s hard to do it today, you know it will only be worse tomorrow.
The school mindset has trained us to wait until the night before the deadline to accomplish our task. While this may teach us how much we are able to do in a short amount of time, it grossly undervalues our future time. We are basically saying “my least valuable self will be two weeks from now, the night before my test.
“Do…or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda, from Star Wars.
Progress…or regress, there is no hover. – Me, but also reality.