The "Save This for Later" Mentality

Wow, three posts in one day. Today must be a very special day. Or maybe it's because I've seen past the illusion of the "save this for later" mentality. Let me explain.

Over the past few days, mainly during the 3-period days we had last week, I've noticed a weird quirky kind of procrastination. After I'm done one task and before I choose the next task to do, I'll think something to the affect, 'Well, I could go and do [a] (with "a" being a useful and enjoyable task that I've thought of), but wait, I should save that for later, when I might not have something better to do.' I'll then proceed to do something less useful and less enjoyable because I don't want to "waste" the good activity.

With this sort of procrastination, I've put off writing this post for the past 3 days, I've put off writing a poem named "Everyone You Know Will Die" for about a month, and I've put off reading several interesting articles on the interweb that could turn out to be very useful. This sort of procrastination has killed several blog ideas (like my "the future of humanity" series, a series on meditation, and a series on Buddhist philosophy); I've always said, 'Well, I should save these ideas for when I have a dearth of ideas.' The problem is, I rarely have a dearth of ideas (whether or not they're any good is the problem), so I end up blogging on more and more mediocre ideas instead of the hard hitters that I've been "saving for later."

I haven't really seen anything on this form of procrastination in anything I've read. It's a really sneaky type because this act of procrastination seems right and intuitive. On the surface, it makes perfect sense, given some assumptions. In the future, I might be lacking in something, so it makes sense to save that something for that later date when I'll be lacking it. The only problem with this mentality is that it's based upon an assumption of scarcity. It's based on the idea that if I take a piece from the usefulness pie, that means there will be less pie in the future. However, life doesn't tend to work that way. Instead, life tends to work through abundance. When I take a piece from the pie, the pie will simply get larger to accommodate for the taking. This especially works in learning/creating. It's not as if when you've learned something about a certain subject, suddenly there's nothing left to learn. No, there's always more to learn, and the only way to get to that "more" is by learning the the things you're putting off out of fear of running out.

Hm, this is interesting. This sort of procrastination makes a potent partner with the perfectionism procrastination I often practice. For example, I've been putting off writing a draft of my graduation speech because I want it to be "perfect." Well, one that's not written is perfect, but it's only perfectly NOT written. Maybe I should get to writing a grad speech now...

The lesson: don't let the mediocre get in the way of the great out of fear that you'll somehow run out of the great. Always strive to spend you're day doing those things that are most useful and that you enjoy the most, and everything will fall into place. You want proof? You've just read the proof.

Namaste.

Note: I wanted to have more examples in this post, but they didn't seem to fit. I'll probably post a part two of this post where I add these things in. I'll save that for later... :)