Sooner or later

Later is the cure for our nows. Surely everything we want to accomplish can be completed at a later date which is best characterized by the old maxim “it’s never too late”. When indecision plagues you as much as it does me sometimes it’s tough to decide how to most effectively use my nows. The paradox of choice seems to be one of the main impediment to making timely decisions. As Barry Schwartz describes, the paradox exists when choice is so abundant, as normally is in north American society, that it causes paralysis in decision making which can also cause us to regret the decisions that we were able to make more often.

Einstein’s dreams by Alan Lightman was a fictional account of all possible permutations of time as Eintein may well have imagined them while working his theory of relativity. One example was the world in which time was infinite and no one died. Two classes of people existed the nows and the laters. The nows seek to do all things within the realm of possibility because outside the constraints of time all things can be accomplished. The laters are not in a hurry to do anything since all things can be accomplished in time. Both lifestyles seem perfectly reasonable and are worth considering as a chosen state of mind.

A wise motivational poster put procrastination in perspective for me:

If it never seems like the right time to do something make the time otherwise the timing will never be right. Regrets are among the least valuable items of social currency. The best story tellers seem to be those that act on impulse and worry little about the implications of those actions. I wish’s and I should have’s are common excuses for inaction and help to temporarily relieve the pangs of confronting change or embracing opportunity but such expressed sentiments fail supplement the experience. Often times things are less complicated than we make them out to be. Failure and rejection may be bitter pills but you can sweeten the experience with what you learn. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Becket