Do it now or you probably won’t do it. I think procrastination happens to most of us, we need to get that something done, but instead of doing it right away we put it off until later and then later comes and we put it off again. The problem with the procrastination strategy is that it’s taking up space in our minds. Usually there is another something that comes up and takes up a bit more space. Soon our lives are full of little things that take up a lot of space; they then turn into mind clutter and even become overwhelming and stressful.

I did a project for a client in upstate New York a few years ago; this fellow was really interesting and was reputed to be worth a lot of money. We were putting together a log home on his 700 acre property. He had the basement already poured when we got there and we started to put the house together on the basement walls. Everything was going well until we got to the front of the house which had a couple of turrets on it, when we discovered that the basement wall had been  poured 18” too far out and the house would not fit the wall. The project was looking like it was going to stall, with about 15 of us standing around and the money clock ticking. The owner jumped on the phone and called the people who had poured the basement; they were not being very helpful and were trying to take no responsibility even though it was in black and white that it was their mistake. He hung up the phone and came back to us not very happy.  He then said “so let’s solve this now, so we can move on”; within 5 minutes we came up with a solution to the issue and were moving again.

This happened several times throughout my week there, and usually within 5 minutes we were up and running again, there was no procrastination which really impressed me. I also noticed that within 5 minutes of each event the gentleman seemed happy again. I asked him how he was able to stay sane and happy among all the mishaps and disasters that went on. His response was, that if he did not deal with situations as they came up he would go insane, but by dealing with each event as it came up he only ever had one thing to deal with and then he could let it go, I was very impressed by this line of thinking. This person not only built houses but developed shopping malls and other large projects, so he had a lot of experience in this field.

Since then I’ve done my best to follow his advice, I try to deal with whatever comes along as soon as possible and preferably right away. If it is a fix-it job around the house or workshop that takes less than 5 minutes, then I do it right away so it is out of my hair.

This is present moment living at its finest and as we can only deal with one thought at a time, it just makes sense to do deal with what is in front of us and not leave it for another day. An area that is especially important to do right away is with relationships, were we can imagine all kinds of things without talking to the person/person’s involved and come up with all kinds of excuses not to make a communication because we fear the outcome. If it is an unfavourable outcome when we communicate with someone, at least now we can move on and make other choices. If it is a favourable one, then we didn’t spend a lot of time making up stories about something that was not real in the first place.