The Biggest Lie in Action

The biggest lie we tell ourselves in the area of action is, "I'll do it later." As C. Northcote Parkinson expressed it, "Delay is the deadliest form of denial."

Putting things off is known, of course, as procrastination. We know that "pro" means for, but we don't know what "crastination" means. Maybe it means laziness. Maybe it means don't go after your Dream, but kid yourself into thinking that someday you will. Whatever crastination means, we're against it.

You could say we're pro anticrastination.

(Actually, we do know what crastination means — crastinus is Latin for things pertaining to tomorrow. Procrastinus is "putting things off till tomorrow," "Never put off till tomorrow," Mark Twain said, "what you can do the day after tomorrow." Procrastinus-crastinus?

The interesting thing about "later" is that it can never be proven false. One can never reproach us. If confronted, we can always say, "I said I'd do it later. It's not later yet."

In this way, we can put off and put off and put off indefinitely. We only run out of laters when we run out of breath. Death is nature's way of saying, "No more laters left." By then, of course, who cares?

It's not "who cares?" when you're dead that counts, it's "who cares?" while you're still alive. The answer to that question is you. Somehow we know how many laters we have stockpiled from the past. We know that adding another later to that pile is like adding a grain of sand to a beach. Somehow, we know we're probably never going to get back to that particular grain of sand.

We know that 'later" is a lie.

If you can do something now, do it now. If it can't be done now, decide (A) it's not going to get done, or (B) when it will get done.

If something doesn't get done, and you decide you will still do it, schedule a specific date and time when it will get done. Schedule the activity in. Write it in your appointment book. If it's not worth the amount of time it takes to schedule it now, it's probably not going to get done "later."

As the guru once said to procrastinating disciples, "You're in your laters now." All those things we put off until "later" return — to be put off until "later" again, and again.

Do them, or declare them done.

When we put things off until some future — probably mythical — Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday's incompletions is a heavy load to carry. Don't carry it.

A Dream is an ephemeral thing. To travel to it, you have to travel light. "I travel light;" Christopher Fry wrote, "as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value."

Getting in the habit of doing what needs to be done as it presents itself to be done — whether it needs to be done in that moment or not — creates an inner freedom for the next moment, the next activity.

Such as, oh, pursuing your Dream.

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