121: Your Future Self is Not More Important Than Your Now Self

When Not to Prioritize Your Future Self Over Your Now Self

This one might be a little controversial, so let’s just get into it. There’s a lot of advice out there about doing things now that your future self will thank you for, taking the time to put things away properly so future you isn’t aggravated later. It’s the same spirit as the old line: if you don’t have time to do something right now, when will you have time to do it over?

A confession from my own basement

My Christmas decorations sat in a disorganized pile in my basement from the moment I took the tree down at the beginning of the month until January 19th, when I finally, finally put them away. Not well. Not organized. I didn’t declutter what I knew I no longer used. I basically slammed lids on bins and shoved everything into the storage space just to be done with it.

Why this actually matters

On paper, this looks like exactly the kind of shortcut I’d normally caution against. But here’s what I noticed: my paralysis around finally dealing with it wasn’t really about laziness, it was about wanting to do it “right.” I kept telling myself I needed to handle the basement properly before I could feel productive about anything else this year, before I could move on to other projects I actually wanted to tackle, like my office, which has gotten genuinely out of control. I was stalling out my entire present life while waiting for the right conditions to deal with the past one properly.

The self-preservation shove

We’d gotten a new tree this year, which came with two extra large boxes I wasn’t sure would even fit under the stairs where Christmas storage normally lives. I kept holding off, wanting to edit things down first, figure out the right configuration, and the accumulating pressure of doing it “correctly” meant it just didn’t get done at all. Eventually I gave up on doing it right and just shoved everything in, including leaving the two oversized new boxes sitting in front of the storage area because they didn’t fit inside.

So what?

Once it was done, however imperfectly, I had to ask myself: so what if the storage area is a disaster for a while? It’s not hurting anyone, and it freed me to move forward with things I actually wanted to focus on. Yes, next Christmas I might feel a flicker of “I wish I’d handled this better.” But I’ll still open the boxes, still start decorating with what I know goes where, and at that point I might actually be in a better headspace to sort through what to donate as I go. Sometimes your later self really will be in a better position to deal with something than your right-now self is, and that’s worth trusting instead of forcing an imperfect present moment into a “proper” one.

Your practical, actionable step

Look at one space you’ve been avoiding, and ask honestly what’s actually paralyzing you. Is it genuinely too big to deal with, or is it the pressure to do it “right” so some future version of you will be grateful? Consider whether making your now self less burdened, even through an imperfect, shoved-in-a-box kind of action, might matter more right now than optimizing for a future moment you can’t fully predict anyway.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.