“I can start any time.”
Whenever I hear that, it’s almost a cinch that whatever project might get started never will be started.
Which is odd, when you think about it.
It seems like, if there’s nothing stopping you, you would just go right out and do the thing you could be doing. But that’s not how it works.
The Quirks Of Human Psychology
It’s kind of like, when you live near a major attraction, at first you think, “Awesome! I’ll be there all the time. How lucky,” and then life kind of meanders on and you realized you’ve been there for a year and you never went once.
I live five miles from the Appalachian Trail. Guess how often I’ve been hiking?
In the same way, “I can start any time,” means you’re waiting for an impetus, some kind of trigger or motivation to tell you “This is the time.” Life will rarely oblige you in this.
Why Not Now?
The truth is, if you could do it any time, you would probably have started. Most likely, though, there’s some kind of invisible obstacle. Maybe it’s work, maybe it’s research. Maybe it’s just inertia.
And on the other side, maybe the motivation isn’t there — in a large part because you know the window of opportunity is wide open. There’s no deadline, there’s no compelling reason that now is better than later.
Sometimes, it’s just because you don’t want it. There’s no shame in that. It turns out that you’re just not interested enough in MoMA enough to go, even now that you live in NYC. Nothing wrong with that. Just stop expending the energy of telling yourself you’ll do it someday. It’s such a drag. Just let it go.
Your Turn
What’s something you could do ‘at any time?’ How long has it been on your plate for? What’s the invisible boundary, or do you just not want to do it all that bad?
And what are you going to do about it now?
[ssbp]
