The Art of Putting Things Off
I put off writing a newsletter for six months.
Not because I didn't have ideas. Not because I was too busy. But because every time I sat down to start, I found something else that needed doing first. Reading the news. Emails to answer. That weird noise the espresso machine was making that definitely required immediate investigation.
Six months of Olympic-level avoidance, all while telling myself I was just "waiting for the right time."
Turns out I'm not alone. Recent research suggests we spend an average of 55 days per year procrastinating. That's nearly two months of our lives dedicated to the fine art of not doing the thing we know we should be doing. And here's the kicker: the more important the task, the more likely we are to delay it. Which explains why I can knock out a brutal threshold session at 6am but somehow can't start writing about why I can't start writing.
For twenty years as a pro, I was what you'd call a "sunset trainer." Not because I loved missing family dinners or had some romantic attachment to golden hour lighting- but because I pushed the last session of the day out until it was the very last chance to log the session under “today”. I'd tell myself it was strategic. Better to get more rest and have higher output. Very scientific. Very reasonable.
Absolute bollocks.
The truth? I was terrified. Every session felt like a final exam. The idea that I was only as good as my last workout meant the stakes were impossibly high. Miss one interval, blow one set, and suddenly the entire edifice of my self-worth came crashing down. So I'd delay. Anything to postpone that moment where I might discover I wasn't good enough on the day.
The weird part is that once I actually started, I was fine. The session happened. Knowing it would be hard was probably part of the success (I see another post coming on expectations…). But that gap between knowing I needed to do something and actually doing it? That's where procrastination lives. In the uncomfortable space of facing what might happen if we try and fail.
Here's what the science tells us that nobody wants to hear: procrastination isn't a time management problem. It's a mood regulation problem. We're not avoiding the task itself- we're avoiding how the task makes us feel. The anxiety. The possibility of failure. The confrontation with our own limitations.
Mark Manson's recently put out a podcast on procrastination. His take: procrastination is ultimately a skill issue, not a moral failure. Which means we're not broken or lazy- we just haven't learned how to sit with the uncomfortable thing long enough to do hard things. For someone who spent two decades mastering physical discomfort, you'd think I'd be better at this. But apparently, teaching yourself to be okay with a burning lactate threshold is different from teaching yourself to be okay with the possibility that your writing might be shit.
The sunset training made sense in a twisted way. By pushing sessions later and later, I got to live in the comfortable fiction that I could still do it- I just hadn't done it yet. The moment I actually started was the moment I had to face the music, as they say. And some days, especially toward the end of a hard training block, the fantasy of potential felt safer than the reality of performance.
These days I procrastinate less, but it hasn't gotten easier. I just recognize the pattern faster. When I find myself suddenly fascinated by reorganizing my sock drawer, I know I'm avoiding something. Usually something that matters.
So if you're putting something off right now, something that actually matters to you, here's a different take: You're not lazy. You're just reluctant of what it means to actually try. And that fear makes sense- it's your brain trying to protect you from potential failure.
But here's the thing about potential: it only exists in the future. And the future never arrives if you keep pushing it to tomorrow.
From someone who gets it just right, some of the time.
Jan