Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 126 - Delay
What’s the one thing you keep putting off?
Welcome to Issue 126 of Deep Life Reflections.
This week, I’m returning to a topic that—like the colour black or straight-leg jeans—never goes out of fashion: procrastination.
In 2021, I wrote an essay for Arabian Business about tackling procrastination in our ‘Age of Distraction.’ I shared the story of Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. According to legend, Melville was so afflicted by procrastination writing his epic novel that he had his wife chain him to his desk until he finished. You can read the full article here.
Back then, I explored the many reasons we procrastinate—a perfectly normal human habit—and argued it’s not always the enemy. Sometimes a little hesitation can do us a world of good.
Four years on, the pace of technology has gone from fast to light speed, driven by micro-entertainment like TikTok, algorithmic feeds, and most of all, the mass adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. In just a couple of years, AI has gone from a curiosity to a daily habit: ChatGPT alone grew from 200 million active weekly users in August 2024 to 800 million in April 2025, processing over a billion queries a day. Which amongst other things, means our tolerance for delay has been sharply eroded.
That ‘Age of Distraction’ has morphed into something new: the ‘Age of I Can Do Anything—Instantly.’ It’s more personalised, persuasive, and automated. And the distraction has only amped up: there’s little irony that the ocean of productivity tools have themselves become distractions.
So, in this era of instant everything, does procrastination still stand a chance
Let’s revisit five key points from my original essay, focusing on the four common causes for procrastination and how the life of an olive tree might offer us an unlikely olive branch.
I’d love to hear your reflections.
1. Fear of Failure
“Fear of failure is often mistakenly interpreted as being lazy. We attach fear, or anxiety, to many of the things we deem most important in life: career, relationships, health. But we are so scared of failing in them, we don’t even dare to make a start. After all, if we don’t do something, we never need to feel the risk of humiliation or ineptitude.
It’s why we often focus on the things that matter little to us; we can get on with doing these things quickly and they can even feel like fun. Meanwhile, the things that matter most get neglected.”
In recent years, the pressure to be productive has shifted. Quiet quitting, remote-work burnout, and the anti-hustle movement mean fewer people openly glorify busyness—though it’s still rife if you know where to look. Yet more of us feel guilty when we’re not producing something. And finishing something always feels good; again, a very human experience. Hence, the fear.
I recently came across an approach to sidestep this fear from Virginia Valian, a cognitive psychologist. Crippling work anxiety meant she couldn’t write a word of her Ph.D. thesis. So she abandoned the ‘proper’ way to work and asked herself how much time she could bear to spend on it each day. The answer was 15 minutes—“a nice solid amount of time I could live through every day.” People laughed at her 15-minutes-a-day plan, but it worked. By making the daily hurdle so low it was almost impossible to fail, she built momentum without inviting the fear that usually comes with starting.
2. Fear of Perfection
“It’s a cruel truth we all have two lives; the life we dream about leading (the fantasy); and the life we actually lead (the reality). We fantasise about every aspect of our lives, but we can’t live up to the impossibly high standards we envisioned for ourselves in the important task we want to take on. So we don’t start it to avoid those all too familiar feelings of incompetence or indignity. Or even if we make a start, the inept and amateurish quality on display horrifies us in those early results.
We can all relate to what I call the “hideous first attempt” at something important; the disgust between our horrible efforts and the masterpieces of finished works we admire in life.”
The “hideous first attempt” has almost become its own creative milestone. Pixar famously says “early ideas are ugly” and builds rewrites into its creative process. Knowing there will be a gap between your vision and your first attempt makes starting easier. And once you’ve begun, you’re already ahead.
I was reminded of this when I took a personality assessment a couple of years ago. For the statement, You likely believe that you have to be perfect in some or many areas of your life, any score above 25 made it true. I scored 34. Not a surprise, even though I’ve done a lot of work to loosen the noose of perfectionism.
I wrote down four important daily reminders in my Notes app:
Perfectionism is not related to quality.
Don’t miss the moments of success.
My self-worth is not related to my accomplishments but my character.
The opinions of those I respect carry weight, but they are not gospel.
The journey continues.
3. Conundrum of Choice
“The conundrum of choice is based on the view that life constantly forces us towards decisions where we have to make hard choices and compromise something. This was the thesis of the 1843 book, Either/Or, written by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
He wrote that the difficulty of choosing means many of us spend our lives avoiding choice. We believe that by delaying choices, such as not quitting the job we hate, all our options seem to stay alive—the job could improve; a better job could appear; we could win the lottery. But it’s an illusion. Not choosing is itself a choice.”
Choice has never been more abundant than it is today. Almost everything can be customised, from designing a new house to choosing your in-flight meal three weeks before you travel. In the age of AI recommendations, options multiply endlessly, and they’re designed to keep us hesitating. The longer we deliberate, the deeper we sink… Kierkegaard’s 2025 tech-era sequel might be titled Either/Or 10X.
Rather than liberated by choice, we feel overwhelmed. My own approach has been to cut back: fewer apps on my phone, fewer providers, fewer things in my home. It’s not a perfect fix—the choices still come thick and fast every day—but every deliberate reduction is a choice in itself.
The writer Oliver Burkeman puts it well:
“You’ll never make time for everything that matters—not because you need more willpower, but because the premise is flawed. The only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit‑denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count.”
What counts for you?
4. The ‘Broken Lightbulbs’
“These are the little irritants that blight our lives. We all have them—something small and inconsequential we need to do or fix, like replace a lightbulb in the kitchen that stopped working last month. But we never get round to fixing many of these.
Part of the reason for our inertia is our perception that these minor irritants are beneath us, and therefore not worth our precious time. We have an important, busy life to lead. We don’t fix the lightbulb because we can’t imagine our mood will be hostage to such trivial things. But the small things accumulate, and they determine much of what we feel. They nag us in their small, annoying way.”
Off the top of my head, I could list a handful of ‘broken lightbulbs’—tasks that have long outstayed their welcome on my to-do list. They’re so unwelcome they get moved to another list, yet somehow they still linger—like those people who can’t exit a bar, refusing to leave until they’re thrown out at 1am.
We aren’t helped by the cottage industry of ‘micro-task completion’ apps that have sprung up in recent years, turning the act of ticking boxes into a game. I’m not convinced they help. If anything, they make things worse: another distraction, and a reminder that the conveyor belt of small jobs never stops.
Best to remember Oliver Burkeman’s words above. A few broken lightbulbs aren’t going to burn the house down. It’s worth getting comfortable with them. They might even be proof we’ve stopped sweating the small stuff.
5. The Olive Tree: Sometimes it’s good to wait
In my article, I also highlighted the value of procrastination through the humble olive tree:
“The olive tree can take a long time to grow to full maturity, often taking up to twelve years to bear fruit. It procrastinates a lot, benefiting from a succession of long summers and extreme winters. They are astonishingly tough, and some olive trees are as much as 1,000 years old. The olive tree imparts a valuable lesson: sometimes it’s good to wait.”
That lesson of the olive tree feels even more poignant now, in a culture obsessed with speed-to-market, scale, and AI tools that promise instant output and overnight expertise.
Research on procrastination increasingly points to its complexity—it’s not a single story. It isn’t always about poor time management or not being motivated. Often, it’s tied to emotional regulation and self-compassion. In the right circumstances, holding back can help us think more clearly, see more options, and deepen our relationships. There have been many times when I was glad to hold back on a decision, making a better one later.
Some things simply can’t be hurried—relationships, craft, wisdom. They take years to develop and need their seasons, good and bad.
Yes, sometimes we need to act fast. Sometimes we don’t. Recognising the difference reframes procrastination from a flaw of willpower to an act of care: a conscious choice not to rush what matters most.
As the world tumbles forward, we might do a lot worse than remember the simple olive tree: patient, enduring, and never in a hurry to bear its best fruit.
A Question for you:
What in your life is worth twelve years of patience?
Olive trees are astonishingly tough, and some are as much as 1,000 years old. They impart a valuable lesson: sometimes it’s good to wait.
Thanks for reading and supporting Deep Life Journey. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment.
Have a great weekend. Stay intentional.
James
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