Hope for Procrastinators in a White T-shirt

I just love this post and this blog- this is a guest post from stabbinginthedark.com

Saturday afternoon laundry.  I had things to do and places to be (those are lies).  My mind raced as I reduced the size of this mountainous pile of laundry one article of clothing at a time. “I don’t have the time to waste folding laundry.”   I grabbed a white undershirt and began to fold it.

The T-shirt was inside-out.  I hesitated before folding it. Should I fix it?  I held and stared at the T-shirt as I contemplated right siding it.  Truth be told, I could have right-sided and reversed it four times in the span that I contemplated what to do.  But I was no longer thinking about the T-shirt, my mind shifted into metaphor mode.

Someone is going to fix this T-shirt.  It’s either going to me or future me. One of us is going to do it, and I get to choose. That doesn’t seem very fair to future me – he gets no vote in this?.  The choice was obvious.  I’m Saturday me with nothing pressing on my plate and future me is going to be running five minutes late for work and grab this shirt.  Which one of us should tackle this?  No brainer, right?

But that’s not how those of us with the procrastination bug roll.  We are selfish and disrespectful of our future selves.  Worst of all, our tactics for living a successful life suck.

Time is the most precious commodity in our lives and it is limited. Every other “self-help” book on the shelf is a 300-page treatise on how to convert your time into success. Piling up crappy tasks on a man (future me) who is always rushing to leave the house on time seems like a poor decision.  He’s the guy who I am counting on to achieve my dreams, maybe I should be working harder at freeing up his time so that he can get moving on that.

I’ve read every book there is to read about procrastination (probably because I had something important that needed to be done), and it wasn’t until I held that T-shirt in my hand did I see a twinkle of light from the end of the tunnel.

My new anti-procrastination pep talk is:  “Don’t be so freaking selfish.  Show your future self the same level of respect you would show anyone that you loved.  Start being more Sun Tzu-ish with your time.”

Remember, someone is going to unscrew that T-shirt.  Who’s it going to be?