Stop Lying to Yourself

How to avoid lying about tomorrow for a better today

A few months back I had to hang a mirror in my living room. It was not a complex job, but it took me 3 months to do. As it sat there gathering dust, the people around me questioned why it wasn't done. Was there something else I needed? Was it difficult to hang? The answer to all these reasonable assumptions was ‘no’.

The real answer was I simply didn’t want to do it, because I was convinced I’d get it wrong and ruin the mirror or the wall. I kept telling myself that I would do it tomorrow instead, all the time knowing that I wouldn’t. I disguised my anxiety as a time-management issue.

This principle lies at the heart of procrastination. It is not a time-management issue, so you are unlikely to solve it by managing your time better. Instead, you need to get to the root of why you are procrastinating…and it might be uncomfortable because it involves looking inward…

When we procrastinate, we lie to ourselves. We don’t say that we won’t do something, we say we’ll do it tomorrow. This lie is so effective because we aren’t saying ‘no’ - we’re saying ‘not now’. This seems more reasonable and makes it such a convincing act of self-deceit. Everyone is busy, and so saying ‘not now’ is simply a matter of priorities.

We developing a mental narrative about why the 1000 other things in our life are more important as an excuse. Simultaneously knowing that they rarely are…

We very rarely avoid the things we want to do.

Researchers have coined the term “present bias” to describe the way in which we tend to put our current short-term needs ahead of our long-term ones, especially when we perceive them to be far off.

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