You Don't Forget. You Avoid
Most procrastination isn't a memory problem. It's an avoidance problem.
There's a version of procrastination that sounds like forgetfulness.
You didn't fix the license.
Didn't set up the corporation.
Didn't do the homework.
Didn't follow through on the thing you said you'd do last time.
And when it comes up you say.
“Oh, I forgot.”
You didn't forget.
You avoided.
Here's the difference.
Forgetting is neutral.
Forgetting is a memory problem.
Forgetting is the thing that genuinely didn't cross your mind until someone mentioned it.
Avoiding is different.
Avoiding is when you thought about it.
Maybe more than once.
You knew it needed to happen.
You knew the longer it sat there the worse it was going to get.
You had the information. You had the time.
And you still didn't do it.
Not because it slipped your mind.
Because it was boring.
Because it wasn't on fire yet.
Because there was something more stimulating sitting right next to it on the list.
That's not forgetting.
That's a pattern.
And patterns don't fix themselves.
Here's what makes this pattern expensive.
The tasks you avoid the longest are almost never the small ones.
They're the ones with real consequences sitting on the other side.
The license expired months ago.
The corporation still isn't set up.
The taxes are going to be a problem if you don't get in front of them now.
The administrative stuff that feels like it can always wait.
Until one day it can't.
And now it's not a boring task anymore.
It's a crisis.
A crisis that cost you real money and real time.
That could have been a Tuesday afternoon six months ago.
So here's the question to ask yourself right now.
Look at the tasks that have been sitting on your list the longest.
Are they hard?
Or are they just not interesting?
Because there's a real difference between a task you don't know how to do.
And a task you just don't want to do.
One deserves help.
The other just needs to get done today.
Stop calling it forgetting.
It's not forgetting.
It's avoiding.
Name it correctly.
Then go do the boring thing before it turns into the expensive thing.