Mental Model: Make Life a Tiny Bit Easier for Your Tomorrow-Self

Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash

This is part of my How to Stop Procrastinating series.

Hey, friends!

This might sound weird, but I LOVE metaphors and mental models. Whenever I stumble upon a new one, I add an entry to my “metaphors and mental models” computer file. So far, there are 255 entries. (My wife says that I’m her cute nerd.)

Today, I want to share a metaphor I use for handling procrastination (it’s from Farnam Street’s newsletter):

Imagine you are tasked with building a brick wall.

Today-self looks at the empty space in disbelief, discouraged at the size of the project. Today-self decides to start tomorrow. Only tomorrow never comes because the empty space again seems insurmountable. Today-self decides to talk about the wall they’re going to build, as if it were the same as building the wall. It’s not.

Tomorrow-self knows that no one builds a wall all at once. It’s going to take a month of consistent effort from the time you start before it’s done. Tomorrow-self wishes you’d stop thinking about the wall and focus on one brick.

The wisdom of tomorrow-self is this: Focus on one thing you can do today to make tomorrow easier. Repeat.

This metaphor has a lot we could talk about. But one idea, in particular, stands out: Make life a tiny bit easier for my tomorrow-self.

I love the idea for two reasons:
1. It pushes me to focus on what I control (today’s effort)
2. It creates a positive cycle. If I make life easier for tomorrow, then tomorrow, I’ll make life easier for the next day.

This is kind of abstract, so let’s look at a concrete example.

My goal is to become a published author. Floating in my head are numerous novels, short stories, and works of nonfiction.

But publishing a book is an enormous task, and I quickly get overwhelmed thinking about all the work. Will publishing one book require hundreds of hours? Thousands? How will I accomplish this while working full-time as a computer programmer? How many years will it take? Decades? How many times will I fail and have to pick myself back up? (Just typing this paragraph makes me feel overwhelmed.)

So—and this might sound strange—I don’t think about the enormity of my goal. I don’t think about the mountain of work required. Instead, I focus on what I can control: Today’s effort.

Today I’ll complete at least one 25-minute writing sprint. Today I’ll block distractions, set my cube timer (Amazon link), and write some crappy words for 25 minutes. That’s it. That’s all I have to do.

25 minutes isn’t much, I know. And yet, the words I write today are the foundation for tomorrow’s writing. Today’s effort make tomorrow’s job easier. If I complete a sprint today, I’ll do one tomorrow and every day after.

In fact, I like to imagine this daily effort being replicated every day for the next 40 years. (40 x 365 is 14,600 days!) With that as my time horizon, I’ll definitely achieve my goal and publish a bunch of books.

This is all possible because I focus on today’s effort and make life easier for my tomorrow-self.

And that’s my advice to you: Focus on today’s effort. Make life a tiny bit easier for your tomorrow-self. It doesn’t have to be anything big or extravagant. But you must do something.

If you can summon the courage to take some small action today, your tomorrow-self will do the same. You’ll be amazed at what you accomplish in a year. And you’ll be astounded at what you accomplish in a decade.

Read more on How to Stop Procrastinating.

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Thanks to Brynn Stewart for reading a draft of this!