Achieving a life goal can be like navigating an obstacle course. The ups and downs slap you with headaches. The twists and turns throw you off.
Because of the perceived challenge, we like to wait for what we believe is the right moment before taking aim at our dreams.
We tell ourselves we haven’t quite arrived at the best time to begin something new.
After all, we will, supposedly, be freer next week or next month. As logical as this outlook may appear, it is wrong. The best moment to start pursuing a goal is the moment right in front of you.
According to something called the planning fallacy, every one of us tends to vastly underestimate how much time it will take us to complete upcoming work.
This phenomenon, coined in the 1970s by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, is why seemingly simple essays and group projects can be more grueling than they appear.
Since the planning fallacy persuades us that our current slate of tasks won’t consume very much time, we are lured into a constant misconception that more free time lies just over the horizon.
When you procrastinate — whether your dream is to launch a YouTube channel, hit the gym or anything else — you risk waiting for the emptying of a schedule that will never be fully emptied.
Thus, as with any journey, the first steps are the hardest.
And they are also the most critical.
Putting off goals won’t help you concentrate on them, it will only delay you from crossing the finish line.
In high school, I hoped to eventually become an author. One day, I decided eventually wasn’t good enough.
As daunting as the undertaking was, I managed to fit writing into a new daily routine. I spent thousands of hours across four years sitting in front of a keyboard, creating and editing the pages of what would become my science fiction novel.
If I had delayed my first keystroke, I wouldn’t have magically found a better time to start later on.
I wouldn’t have suddenly become a better writer in English class. Experience became my teacher.
Waiting would have done nothing but push back my novel’s eventual completion.
It would have been easy to hold off becoming an author until I was more prepared. Thankfully, I didn’t.
This endeavor taught me more rules about the English language than I knew existed, but the greatest lesson wasn’t related to writing.
It was that you will never find a better day to reach for a goal than today.
Weave something new into your daily routine. You will thank yourself later.
mitcchri@indiana.edu
@AtlasMitchell
