Scott H Young

One of the dilemmas that I have frequently faced is in trying to determine whether procrastination is justified or not. Sometimes you need to be patient and wait and other times call for immediate action. What often ends up happening is the events you put off until later you never actually get to. Now never seems like a good time, so you comfortably push events off into the future.

How can you determine whether you are putting something off because of legitimate reasons or are just procrastinating until the fourth of never? Since our own fears and emotions are often carefully disguised through logic and rationality, it can be difficult to make intelligent decisions about whether that procrastination is actually justified.

This dilemma has forced many self-help experts to tout that the answer always lies in doing things now as opposed to never. Although this remedy certainly works in a lot of cases, most of my intelligent readers realize that it may not always be the best solution.

What if your dream was to start a business, but you’ve just found yourself in serious debt? Perhaps the answer here is to put off taking action and rebuild your funds before starting fresh. Similarly, what if it is impossible to act now and procrastination is a must. Let’s say you are going to ask your boss for a raise, but she is out on a two week business trip. How will you know you simply won’t procrastinate more when she comes back?

Initially I found this situation very difficult to deal with. Although many times I correctly procrastinated for legitimate reasons, too many times I ended up procrastinating until the threat of a consequence forced me to take action. If it was foolish or impossible to act immediately in all cases, how could I determine which ones were legitimate and which were just attempts to needlessly procrastinate? More importantly, when faced with these attempts at procrastination, how could I stop them?

Fast Forward to the Future

One of the problems that occurs when procrastinating is that it is very comfortable to push a deadline into the future, but eventually that future date must come. You can never do something in the future, only in the now. So all those events you’ve put off, eventually must come into the present.

This at first glance seems obvious, but it is an important point that seems to be missed by the subconscious when you are trying to procrastinate. Whatever you plan for in the future you eventually have to do, and when you do it, it will be in the present moment. Because much of procrastination stems from fear, your brain feels relieved thinking the threat is gone, even though it is just delayed.

The way to determine whether your reasons are legitimate is to do a little mental exercise. Sit back and close your eyes and visualize what it is that you need to do. Make the visualization as vivid as possible, and make no attempts to censor your inner emotions. If it feels lousy, scary or painful to do this activity, then visualize that too.

What you are trying to do is determine what it would feel like to be in the position of your future self doing the very thing you are putting off. Although it only exists in your head, you are imagining that instead of procrastinating, you are actually doing it.

Now I want you to notice what you feel when you are in that situation. Chances are it will be negative emotions and feelings. If you are imagining doing a boring, long-winded chore you might feel drudgery. If you are imagining doing something fearful you will probably feel scared. Look carefully, since your imaginations can never fully capture the true intensity of the emotions that you will be feeling.

Whenever you notice negative feelings and emotions during your visualization, that is your signal to put a red-flag on this activity because it is very likely going to be the target of procrastination. If you’ve built up enough inner emotional mastery and discipline, you may be able to overcome these roadblocks, but negative feelings mean you are far more likely to put it off.

When you come to this point you have a couple options. First, if possible, do the thing right now. Even though you may have wanted to put off the event to a later space in time, procrastination feeds upon itself, and any delay will make it harder to overcome. This is the easiest route to break free of the cycle of procrastination.

Since it may be impossible to take action right now, either because of a real, physical limitation or simply an emotional block that your willpower can’t overcome, you need to take steps to ensure that when the future date arrives, you won’t procrastinate further.

A good way to look at your problem is like a roadblock is stopping your path. Some of these roadblocks will be physical limitations (you can’t ask your boss for a raise because she isn’t there). Other times your roadblocks will be mental (I should start working on my project now, but you know the weather is just so bad right now…)

If you currently lack the willpower to jump over your roadblock, your next step is to try and reduce the size of the roadblocks so they don’t impede your success. Physical roadblocks can’t be removed, but most of your mental roadblocks can be.

Breaking Down Negative Expectations

The first way to break down those mental roadblocks is to go back to your visualization. Look at any negative expectations you have and the emotions you associate with them. These are your mental roadblocks. You know you are free of mental roadblocks if looking back at your visualization is free of negative feelings.

Look at these negative expectations and ask yourself how you can reduce them. If you think working on a project will be boring, why not add music? If asking your boss for a raise might be scary, why not prepare exactly how you are going to ask her? Come up with as many ways as you can to possibly reduce the negative impact of your visualization.

Depending on your creativity and experience using this technique, you may end up reducing most of your mental roadblocks, but inevitably some will still exist. Unless your willpower is significantly high to overcome these roadblocks, when the time comes to act you will end up putting it off again. Worse you are more likely to rationalize your procrastination off forever, never taking action.

The final solution if you can’t reduce negative expectations is to force yourself over them. Getting leverage is a powerful way to stay committed to something even when natural obstacles stand in your way. So if you can’t seem to build the willpower to overcome those last few obstacles, you need to build enough momentum behind yourself to push yourself over them.

There are many ways you can get leverage on yourself from making a public commitment, writing your goal down and even so-called “burning the ships” where you physically cut off any option for retreat like a conquering army burning the ships to prevent retreat. With enough leverage you can overcome strong mental roadblocks.

When to Act — Is it Really Now or Never?

By continually repeating the process of visualizing the future event, and systematically breaking down your negative expectation, you can remove many of the mental roadblocks that prevent success. When you can’t shrink the roadblocks any further, creating leverage can give you the final push over those obstacles.

This brings us back to our original question, when emotions are involved, how can you know when procrastination is justified? It is so easy to rationalize that it can be difficult to tell when those rationalizations are based off of emotional pictures rather than sound reasoning.

In some cases, such as the absent boss make an obvious need for putting the event off. Other cases such as the poor potential business owner can be a little more vague. Although it isn’t by any means a perfect strategy, this is a simply way to determine whether you should act or create a purposeful delay.

My basic reasoning is simply this. The larger the negative emotional burden you have attached with the possible outcome, the greater the risk of procrastinating. Even if it isn’t a perfect time, if the situation has enough negativity associated, it is probably best to do it now. If through visualization and systemic reduction of roadblocks, you can make the event neutral or positive, then it is more likely that your reasons for delay are justified.

If you feel strongly that there are legitimate reasons to delay, but you still feel a very strong negative burden, it is time to once again use leverage. Create a high amount of consequences that will happen if you fail to act by the given date, no matter what. Although acting now is probably your best bet, if this is impossible, creating leverage can do the trick.

To summarize, this is what you are going to do the next time you are thinking of procrastinating (especially if it is something big):

• Visualize the future event and try to detect any negative emotions or expectations.
• If the amount of negative expectations is large and it is possible to do it now, do it now.
• If you can’t do it now (real or imagined roadblocks)
  • Finding creative solutions to reduce the roadblocks
  • …or get enough leverage to force you over them.

There are going to be a lot of things you aren’t going to want to do but need to. Some of these may be boring and long. Some of them might be painful and hard. Some will be terrifying. Remove the disguises procrastination uses and take action. Life isn’t going to wait, why should you?

What should you do with your life? I frequently notice many people my age (my eighteenth birthday was in August) and many people considerably older than that have a very hard time arriving at an answer to that question. Terrified to make the ‘wrong’ choice and get stuck into a life they hate, they wander around clueless of what they want to do.

Left without certainty of what to decide for their life, many people simply settle for what’s available at the time. Current job, current relationship, current direction of progress. Never satisfied with today they have no idea where they want their future to head. As a result these people end up spending most their life in a state of vague unhappiness.

Some people manage a little better. They set some goals, plan ahead and move into a position that seems okay, but life always feels like a compromise. A fine balance between security and adventure, duty and passion. Inevitably these people feel that somewhere along the road of life they took a wrong turn and are no longer where they want to be.

With all this pressure, it can be very hard to answer this question. How can you possibly decide how you want your entire life to be shaped? I think there is a way around this problem, but it requires a little more depth.

The Myth of Whole Life Decisions

The real problem isn’t that deciding what to do with your life is hard. It is the fact that deciding what to do with your entire life is a ridiculous question to ask in the first place!

You are not a fixed being. Every experience you have after this point will shape you. If you are like myself and you consciously pursue experiences that shape you in a positive direction, you will most often find that after a few years of this process your way of perceiving the world change drastically.

The reason that deciding what to do with your life is so difficult is simply that no decision would be adequate. Even if you had the perfect knowledge and foresight to predict what you would want at every stage of life, no one decision would satisfy everyone. If you are growing then you are changing. And if you change a lot, then decisions made in the past might not be the best for the future.

This is results in the myth of what I call making “whole life” decisions. These decisions include what your life’s purpose is, what you plan to do with your life, a life to-do list, or any other such decisions that encompass your entire life. The reason they are flawed is simply that if we look at a twenty, forty, sixty and eighty year old versions of yourself they may end up being so different that any one decision would be inadequate.

What to Do Instead?

Once you’ve come to the conclusion that trying to pick a single path for your entire life is ultimately futile, you need to start thinking about what you are going to do right now. Clearly making no decision about what to do is a bad move as you will simply drift in the waters of life, without direction or progress. But, if making these whole life decisions is so likely to result in a suboptimal answer somewhere along the road, how can you go about creating clarity about what you should do?

Looking where your purpose overlaps your passion lies the answer of what to do. Steve Pavlina breaks purpose down into four layers of what you need to do, what you have the skills to do, what you want to do and finally what you should do. The answer is fairly similar in deciding what you should do right now. It is where your needs, your abilities, your desires and ability to serve coincide.

What you need to do is what you need to do to survive. This means determining how you are going to make an income, buy food, stay healthy and ensure the survival and safety of your family. Without money and food on the table, all the hype about purpose and growth doesn’t seem all that important.

What you have the skills to do points to your areas of aptitude. If you are young, like myself, then maybe you have talents in areas that haven’t yet become full skills. This area determines where you have a better chance to fulfill yourself and society than other people. Chances are you have talents or skills in multiple areas.

What you want to do points to what you are passionate about. These are the things that you find enjoyable, like to do and find interesting. Everyone has there own interests and passions and this is the area that determines what you would enjoy doing.

What you should do points to where you can be of most service to others. Even if you fulfill needs, aptitudes and passion but what you are doing isn’t that useful to society, it will be difficult to feel fulfilled. Only when you combine all four areas and determine the place that they overlap most strongly can you actually decide what to do.

Set Long-Term Goals

Once you have searched the small area that decides your purpose you need to start setting long-term goals to motivate your progress. Unlike short-term goals which are there to provide motivation and focus, long-term goals are used to provide direction. Setting five, ten and even twenty year goals is the next step.

Keep in mind that the purpose of these goals isn’t necessarily that you will achieve them (just as it isn’t the direct purpose of any goal). As I previously mentioned, chances are your long term goals will slowly fall out of sync with who you are as you grow. Chances are you might need to change or adjust these goals before you ever achieve them.

A little over a year ago I set several five and ten year goals for myself. Although at the time these goals were very meaningful and motivating to me, I’ve slowly moved from them even in the short span of one year. I may end up removing, altering or changing those goals in a year or two as I shift even more.

This shifting occurs because as you grow and gain experience the overlapping region between what you need to do, can do, want to do and should do changes. Your initial plan was based on one set of regions which may very well change in the years that come.

Deciding What to Do Right Now

Ultimately, you can never make a decision in the future, only in the present. Deciding what to do for your entire life right now will never result in an optimal decision simply because you are constantly growing and circumstances will change. What you need to do instead is find out what is the best path for you to take right now.

There is a myth in our culture that tells us that because we have to change paths, that the time spent on the old path was a waste. That time spent working in one career before a career change was wasted. That time spent in one relationship before starting a new one was wasted. This is garbage. So long as you are always doing where purpose, aptitude, interest and need overlap, you are always doing the best you can, even if you eventually change your mind.

Don’t decide what you want to do with your entire life. Determine what you should do right now. Most of the beauty of life comes from the fact that you can never be exactly sure where the path will go. Set your long-term goals to give yourself a picture of a future, but when you outgrow that picture, don’t worry about it and create a new one. For you can’t live in tomorrow only ever live in today.