The Hidden Genius of Procrastination

I just got off a two-month road trip of five countries, a stretch of US states, four-plus weeks of the international leg alone, starting in Kuala Lumpur and ending in Lisbon. It was work and play woven together, the way I like it, and it gave me something I don't always have as much time for as I like: air time. Real thinking time. Some of my best thinking happens at altitude. And a great example of that came flying into Qatar, looking down at the Strait of Hormuz, somewhere in early June.

Sometimes the instinct to hold off just means the timing is off, or something feels wrong and needs investigating. Sometimes it means I need to shift into my other strong mode—being more deliberately analytical. That mode has less to do with the me who does what he wants when he wants, and more to do with the me who built the success that earned that freedom in the first place. And sometimes it means I know there's something I'm missing that someone else wouldn't. Because as good as you are, what makes you unstoppable is having great people around you who can bring their own genius into the mix.

For a quickstart, you can lose interest when things will take time or be a slow process. And this is an easy thing to feel. So it's extremely valuable—in fact, I think it's a difference that allows people to break through certain personal and business plateaus—to learn what to do when your interest flags and you don't have easy energy for something some part of you feels like you should be doing.

And that "should be doing" that can become full-blown guilt if ignored is another interesting thing to dig into. Because another secret to getting to your next level is hiding there. It's hiding in phony suffering.

We all know what suffering is. And most people would say that feeling guilty, or feeling like you have unmet responsibilities, is certainly unpleasant. Even very successful people who are setting goals to do even more can fall into this—feeling bad or wrong, feeling like they should be ashamed of not being where they said they'd get, not realizing their potential, not hitting a goal.

This can certainly be agonizing. But what I'll say is this: if it were really that agonizing, they'd stop. We tend to work to avoid things we don't like. So if that self-castigating feeling persists beyond a reasonable amount of time, it's worth asking yourself something. Why haven't I figured this out yet?

That's the real question. Because nine times out of ten, they'll find that the answer is: I already know what my next step is. I just don't want to do it. So in this case, they're not confused or impatient the way it's normal to be when you're figuring something out. They're experiencing a suffering—a suffering of guilt, or a suffering of a crisis of confidence. And when that happens, what you're really looking at is neurotic suffering. Suffering something easier to bear, in exchange for not having to suffer something you're more afraid of.

What does that harder suffering look like? It looks like working in a mode you don't like, or doing something you're not confident about. For some people it's about having to share credit. It's specific to each person. Entrepreneurs who love being seen as visionary won't love needing to follow boring, disciplined market research into their next big play. They may be hesitating because they're waiting until they feel like they're moving because of a lightning bolt only they could have or see—waiting until there's a story to tell about it that will blow everyone away, the way only they can. For them, it would be suffering to feel ordinary, or to be seen as ordinary.

Similar to that, it may be real suffering to admit you're following your team's advice and not your own intuition, or that the big partnership or deal came through someone besides yourself. This is common as an entrepreneurial company grows and gains more and more employees — some of them are great, and you have to learn to share the glory. More common than you'd expect.

And sometimes it goes the other way: someone who values being seen as principled, as a good person, faces something they have to do—or an opportunity they want to take—that they don't know how to reconcile with who they believe themselves to be, who they like to be seen as, or, worst of all, what they really believe is right. Not just appearances. A real conflict that will have to be faced. Will you adjust the frame around your values, or will you stick to your principles? It will take a real process that no one can do for you. That's really difficult stuff. It's exactly what people avoid.

And neurotic suffering, the shame, the guilt, the crisis of confidence that becomes easier to feel with each repetition, is the trickiest trick a mind can play on itself to avoid doing something that's difficult, uncharacteristic, or requires us to change.

So the next time you find yourself in that familiar feeling of not being where you want to be, sitting with the guilt of what you haven't done yet, ask yourself honestly: is this really confusion, or do you already know what you need to do next?