Do it Tomorrow

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”— Anonymous

We all know something about procrastination. Most of us have probably practiced it quite successfully.

Tomorrow is remarkable.

Tomorrow I can exercise, clean the garage, organize the photographs, and finally deal with whatever is in that drawer.

Tomorrow appears to have considerably more time and energy than today.

We put off unpleasant things for understandable reasons. We may be tired, overwhelmed, afraid of failing, or simply unwilling to deal with something difficult.

But we also procrastinate about things we genuinely want to do.

That is more puzzling.

• The trip we’ve talked about for years.

• The workshop we would love to take.

• The creative project we really do want to begin.

• The conversation we've been putting off.

Why would we avoid something we want?

Perhaps because wanting and doing ask very different things of us.

As long as I haven’t begun, almost anything remains possible.

Possibility is wonderfully accommodating.

Reality is less so.

Beginning changes things. The trip may be exhausting. The workshop may reveal how much we don’t know. The project may look very little like the beautiful thing we imagined.

Sometimes procrastination may be less about avoiding the work than avoiding the moment when the imagined becomes real.

And procrastination has a particularly clever disguise: busyness.

We can accomplish quite a lot while carefully avoiding the one thing we keep saying matters to us.

Pablo Picasso offered a rather less forgiving view:

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

That’s a bit severe.

But beneath it is an uncomfortable truth. Tomorrow is not an unlimited resource.

There are projects we may never make, places we may never go, things we may never learn. One life simply cannot hold everything we might imagine doing.

But perhaps, when something we say we want remains perpetually somewhere out there, the question isn't:

Why do I procrastinate?

Perhaps the question is:

What am I protecting by not beginning?

• The perfect version that still exists because reality hasn’t had a chance to interfere?

• My image of myself, if beginning means discovering my limitations?

• The pleasure of wanting something that may be less satisfying once it becomes real?

Eventually, doing something asks us to give that up, to allow what is imagined to become an imperfect, complicated, disappointing, surprising, real thing.

Perhaps beginning is simply our willingness to make that trade.

Tomorrow already has plenty to do.