Six days · About five minutes a day
Starting Small
See how later works, make the first step small enough to take, and let the doing carry you.
Your six days
- Spot the later — Free in your browser
- Why starting is hard
- Make the first step tiny
- The moment of starting
- Add one basket
- Walking toward it
A taste of Day 1: Spot the later
Welcome. Putting things off is rarely laziness. It's usually a feeling we'd rather not have yet. Over six short days, we'll practise starting small. Today, we just notice the word later.
You dispose of that which is in the hand of Fortune, and you let go that which is in your own. Whither are you looking, whither are you stretching forward? everything future is uncertain: live now straightway.Seneca · On the Shortness of Life, section 9
Aubrey Stewart, 1889
Seneca is writing about whole lives, but the pattern is the same on a small scale. We hand today's time to a future self, whom we assume will be more energetic and less busy. That self rarely arrives. Notice the feeling just before you postpone something: a small tightness, a wish to look away. That feeling is the doorway. You don't have to walk through it today. You only have to see it.
Try the reflection
Think of one thing you've been putting off. Not the biggest, a modest one. Hold it in mind and notice what happens in your body and in your thoughts. Is there a tightness? A story, like I'll do it when I feel like it? Name what you notice, silently, without judging it. Take two and a half minutes.
One question to take with you
What are you putting off, and what does it feel like to think of it?
Day 1 is free. Days 2–6 are planned for the iPhone app, coming soon. This is reflection, not medical advice.