Down the Rabbit Hole: The Art of Procrastination

If something feels too hard to start, it usually just means the first step isn’t small enough. Procrastination isn’t laziness; it’s hesitation. It’s that moment before motion when the task looks too big, too heavy, or too far away. So we stand at the edge, waiting for courage to appear.

The trick is to make the first step smaller, sometimes so small it almost feels ridiculous. One line. One phone call. One push-up. Because if you don’t do the first push-up, you’ll never do the fiftieth. The first move isn’t meant to be perfect; it’s just meant to begin momentum.

And when even that smallest step feels impossible, I seek help. Help from a team. Help from someone whose enthusiasm sparks mine. Help from a tool or bit of technology that makes the task lighter. Because once I’m moving, I can keep moving but sometimes I need to borrow someone else’s confidence just to get started.

The other thing I do is schedule the meeting. I know that if I’ve committed to showing up, I’ll do the work before that meeting comes up. It’s how I trick myself into motion. If the time is set, I’ll be ready. My day needs to be full enough to keep me sharp, because when I’m busy, I get more done. If I start lazing out, I lose rhythm.

Work always expands to the time and people available. Remember that.

Still, not all procrastination is wasted time. Sometimes, when we delay what we think we should be doing, our procrastination takes us down a rabbit hole and there, unexpectedly, we find Wonderland.

I’ve often started an article wanting to write about A and ended up writing about Z. Somewhere between the two, I discover something extraordinary: an idea, a truth, a bit of magic I never would have found if I’d stayed on the straight path.

Of course, the article about A still needs to be written. But when I return to it, I bring a piece of Wonderland back with me. The detour becomes part of the story and that, in the end, is how creative works sometimes come into being.