You have as much time today as you'll ever have
A manifesto for getting it done, or letting it go
Do you have an unread book on your night stand that’s been sitting there for months? Do you have items on your to-do list that keep getting transferred to tomorrow? How about big home projects you keep thinking you should tackle, like repainting the primary bedroom from that terrible color the previous owners loved?
All of us have tasks that may be valuable but aren’t urgent. In the face of more pressing things, the tasks get put off again and again. We’ll get to them when life calms down. We’ll get to them next month, next year, when the kids are older, when life is somehow…different.
It’s understandable. Perhaps life will be different in the future. I do imagine that my life will shift a bit by 15 years from now when I don’t have five children under my roof.
But there are two drawbacks to kicking tasks forward.
The first drawback is that the tasks may never get done. If they’re worth doing, that’s too bad (I mean that color! It’s terrible!).
But the second drawback — which is more pernicious — is that the tasks hang over our heads for days or weeks or month on end. Loose ends create anxiety and consume mental bandwidth.
So what can we do about this?
I think it’s wise to repeat this mantra: I have as much time today as I ever will. Most likely there is not some magical future time when you will be more well-rested, happy and energetic and no one will want anything from you. Whatever you’re working with now is what there is.
Future You is just…you
That means that if you don’t feel like doing something today, you will most likely not feel like doing it in the future either. If you can’t see how you’d fit something into life now, it’s not going to magically fit in six months either.
By recognizing that we have as much time today as we ever will, we’re able to make more realistic choices about what tasks we choose to take on and what we let go.
So, if you haven’t hauled out your water color paints in a decade, you probably aren’t going to go to that workshop on water color paintings that your local library is hosting. You can toss the flyer.
On the other hand, sometimes recognizing that we have as much time today as we ever will can prompt us to knock out a task immediately. Go ahead and call your doctor’s office about the billing error. You’ll need to address the issue at some point and there’s no reason to think you’ll have more time for that tomorrow. It’s just as likely you’ll have less time tomorrow!
Someday/maybe
Now, to be sure, sometimes, you may want to keep a task in mind for the future when it can replace something that’s a current focus. For instance, it is entirely rational to decide that this month you are getting the washing machine replaced, and then next month your home maintenance project is switching out that awful light fixture upstairs, and then the month after that you paint the bedroom. One of the upsides of creating what David Allen calls a “Someday/Maybe” list is that you can keep track of things you might want to do without committing to them or even feeling bad that you’re not doing them. You can review this list from time to time to see if anything speaks to you.
But it’s good to be rational. If you don’t want to spend hours organizing your garage now, you’re not going to want to do it in the future. That said, you might be willing to spend 10 minutes on it now in between other things. Which means maybe you’ll have the energy for 10 minutes tomorrow. Enough bits of time add up. Or you can decide you just don’t care — which is hopefully liberating. Or at least a better use of energy than putting something on a to-do list, not doing it, and then feeling bad about it too.