Start Now. Get Perfect Later. summary

Procrastination. It’s a word most people know well. In fact, you might even identify as a first-rate procrastinator. But hold that thought. Why label yourself? The truth is, everyone procrastinates sometimes. It all depends on what tasks lay ahead of us and whether or not that task is inside or outside of our comfort zone.

Soccer superstar Lionel Messi isn’t going to hesitate in making decisions when he’s on the pitch, but he might if you ask him to sign up for a ballet class.

So don’t think of procrastination as a bad thing or a category to put yourself into. In areas where you’re experienced and confident, you likely make decisions quickly and with ease. The key is to realize that this decisiveness is something you can harness in other areas of your life as well. It’s like building a muscle – the more you flex it, the stronger it gets.

It helps to build up your self-awareness around this issue. By recognizing the actions you gravitate toward when procrastinating, as well as understanding the deeper reasons behind these tendencies, you can better manage your impulses.

Popular procrastinating activities include scrolling through social media, cleaning the house, exercising, or diving into mindless, low-priority tasks. Or, you might engage in “pre-crastination” which is what happens when you spend hours, days, months, engaged in busy work that’s supposedly setting the table for doing something big. These are all ways we avoid facing more significant challenges and recognizing these patterns is the first step to overcoming them.

Now, understanding the deeper, underlying causes is even more important. These issues might include a fear of failure, resistance to authority, or even a fear of success and the pressures it brings.

Fear of failure is a big one. Let’s face it, we tend to be our own harshest critics and we make the mistake of associating our sense of self-worth with the results of our work. But we’re not defined by our work – whether we’re talking about successes or failures.

The world may judge what we create, but that’s out of our control and worrying about what other people may or may not think isn’t a good reason to avoid getting to work. Be kind to yourself, and be sure to maintain a healthy boundary between your work and your self-esteem.

It’s also easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism, where the desire to get everything just right can actually hold us back from starting anything at all. But let’s just admit it: perfection is a myth. And when we aim for it, it’s only going to lead to insecurity, procrastination, and a never-ending feeling that nothing is ever enough.

The irony is that your imperfections are what make you relatable and human. So strive for excellence, not perfection. By starting now, even if things aren’t perfect, you’ll allow yourself to grow, learn, and avoid the paralysis that comes from trying to attain the unattainable.