Rule #20: Do the Thing Now

I had an email to send this morning but I didn’t want to send it. 

I needed to respond to a factory in Thailand that’s waiting for me to visit them. All indications are they’re a fantastic factory, but I’m not going to be able to visit them for another month. I didn’t want to tell them. So, I opened up my laptop and I started writing this piece of literary gold. 

As my brain was freaking out because I wasn’t doing what I needed to do, I continued processing the topic of my writing: Do the Thing Now. 

This kind of thing pops up all of the time; there’s something that needs to be done and it’s not going to be comfortable. Meanwhile, there are ten other things that also *need* to get done, but they’re easier.

So why do we do this? Simply, and slightly more scientifically put, because it’s something that we perceive as a threat to our self identity or competence — we avoid the hard things because we want to think of ourselves as being good at what we do. And not sending that email? I reserve the right to think that I’m effective by doing something else, whether it’s writing, Photoshopping, adding expenses into my accounting platform, whatever. I’m the king of gravitating to the easy just so I can feel productive, regardless of whether it’s the right kind of productivity. 

And I fully understand that not sending it will cost me something, whether it’s a hit to my reputation with the factory or losing the factory altogether. But the need to convince myself that I’m good, fast and capable entirely outweigh the minor discomfort of telling someone that I’m going to show up later than I’d hoped.

The thing is, the longer I wait to send that email, the harder it’s going to get to actually send it. As I spend time writing, Photoshopping, or doing expenses, the initial anxiety that’s causing me to avoid sending the email will increase, causing additional stress. And if I let this go long enough, and make a habit of neglecting other things as well (go big or go home, right?), the impacts on my mental health can be extreme: increased anxiety, depression-like symptoms, lower self esteem, etc… And all of this, simply because I don’t do the things that seem hard. 

By the way, I wrote and sent the email about 30 seconds after I opened Pages to write. I recalled the rule that I was writing about and got it off my plate, done and it was easy. I’m still waiting for a response from the factory, and that’s an entirely different kind of stress. 

Keep grinding. 

Source:

• Why Wait? The Science Behind Procrastination – A deep dive into the psychological framework of delay, proving it’s an emotional regulation failure rather than a time-management flaw. (via Association for Psychological Science)