There’s a friend I haven’t contacted in months. In fact, it’s been almost a year. I care deeply about him. I think about him often. But whenever he enters my mind, along with the intention to call him, I tell myself, “Eh, now is not a good time.”
If it’s daytime, surely, I’ll disturb him at work. If it’s nighttime, I’ll wake him. If I’m out on the street, it’ll be too loud. If I’m at home, I won’t feel sociable enough to make that call and conjure my friend on the other end of the line.
I did try setting a reminder. But once the reminder rang, I went back to the same old spiel: Now is not a good time.
There was this girl I fancied once. A friend of a friend. I only saw her occasionally, and when I did, there were others around, so asking her out always seemed like bad timing. To begin with, we needed to be alone. Additionally, I told myself that I could only ask her out if I felt confident at that moment. It was also of paramount importance to casually bring up the topic, while also having in mind a suave suggestion for our first date.
One night, as everyone in the friend group went their own way, the girl and I went in the same direction. There was this short, awkward moment where we’d already said goodbye, and then both said, “Oh, you’re also going in this direction? Okay, cool.” Then, suddenly, I realized that this was it. This was the moment to ask her out. We were walking for a moment in silence, and I was petrified. If I don’t do it now, I thought, I never will.
We walked a bit further, and I still didn’t say anything.
I consider meditation to be a vital practice in my life. It’s the only way I’ve found to somewhat come to peace with this endlessly rambling and insulting person I call my mind. If there’s one habit that I know can consistently and reliably improve my mental health and overall well-being, it’s meditation. Having lived with this insight for some years now, you’d expect that meditating is exactly what I’d do each morning, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower.
Yeah… no.
This morning, I stepped out of bed and thought to myself, “Now is not a good time to meditate.” Instead, I decided to brew some coffee. And after drinking coffee, my mind became all hyperactive, so that certainly wasn’t a good time to meditate. So I started answering emails. Then, I did some writing.
Surely, I thought to myself, I’ll meditate later in the day.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that what I’m circling here is the single most important reason why I don’t live a more vibrant, fulfilling, and unconflicted life. Call it the not-a-good-time syndrome.
- An impulse for a worthwhile undertaking enters my mind.
- I tell myself that now is not a good time.
- I postpone the undertaking to a later, seemingly better time.
- Once that “better time” comes around, I return to step one.
I used to cope with the not-a-good-time syndrome as if it were procrastination. I would build motivation in whatever ways possible and take practical steps toward project completion, such as writing a to-do list or breaking down the task into tiny chunks.
But.
When it comes to the things that matter most to me, it’s a different debate. In these cases, I procrastinate not because I don’t care about the task. I procrastinate because I care too much about the task. It’s not that I don’t take calling my friend, asking someone out, or meditating seriously enough. I take these things too seriously. And for this reason, I spend my time creating the right conditions and optimizing a hypothetical outcome rather than actually doing the damn thing.
So, from my experience, trying to optimize the not-a-good-time syndrome only made matters worse. All planning methods increase the gap between intending and acting, rather than decreasing it. Thus, they attest that now is not a good time because if we’re in the optimization business, there’s always a better, or even a perfect time. The present becomes a flaw to be fixed in the future rather than a woe to be worked with.
What this conundrum seems to call for, then, is a rather counterintuitive approach.
Last summer, I started taking cold showers in the morning. Initially, I tried to delay the cold as much as possible. I showered hotter than usual for a while, and only then did I switch to the cold setting. Or I gradually moved the handle from warm to cold, so the contrast wouldn’t be as stark. But again, that made it worse. It was like some sort of buildup, like a plane speeding down a needlessly long runway before it takes off, during which my mind had enough time and space to spin out of control. This is going to be horrible. It’ll be so cold. I like it when it’s warm. Can we stay warm, please? Hey, can we —
The trick, I’ve found, is to flick the faucet to the cold setting. The word “flick” is crucial here because, paradoxically, the sooner and the faster I switch to cold, the less time my mind has to spin out of control and the more bearable the shower gets. Yes, for a moment, the cold hits me like a slap in the face. I gasp for air. My eyes open wide. But then I tell myself it’s just water.
I steady my breathing and calm down.
It may sound foolish to use cold showers as the pivotal metaphor here, but it’s with this sense of urgency and resoluteness that I want to tackle the tasks that matter most to me. As soon as the impulse to do them enters my mind, I just do them. This immediacy of contact short-circuits the not-a-good-time syndrome. It robs it of oxygen before it can turn into a fire that needs to be extinguished.
Before I know it, I flick the faucet. I sit down to meditate. I have that difficult conversation. I call that friend.
Of course, my mind objects. “But yu can’t call your friend rIgHt nOw! hE Is aT wOrK. yOu nEeD tO dO iT lAtEr.”
Often enough, thoughts like these appear as valid objections, leading me to steer the boat around and return to a safe haven. But really, this is just the inner procrastinator in disguise. After all, I can still send that friend a message saying that I’ll call him tonight. Or I can tell my housemate that I really need to call my friend tonight, and if not, I’ll buy them dinner.
In other words, it’s almost never literally the case that I can’t take the next-best step toward doing something that matters to me. And yes, sometimes, the next-best step might be writing a to-do list, sketching out a plan, or even delaying the task for the sake of rest and relaxation.
But I think the deeper point I’m trying to make here is to realize that “I’ll do it later” is an empty phrase unless “later” turns into “now.”
For if it doesn’t, why plan and postpone in the first place?
Ultimately, the stars will never fully align. It’s never a truly good, let alone perfect, time to do anything at all. But more often than not, I’ve found it’s quite sufficient to take action when the time seems good enough. When I catch a glimpse of this reality, I feel a sobering jolt of urgency.
I’m here, and I can act now. Which, let’s be honest, is the only time and place to do things anyway.
(While writing this, I sent a text message to my friend. I’ll call him tonight.)