The Fallacy Of Waiting For The Right Time

Have you ever put something off? Something that you think would be a good idea, but you decide not to do it right now. And, you justify it to yourself by telling yourself that you’re waiting until the right time.

You’ll wait until you have more time. Until you retire. Until you have more money. Until… until… until…

Then what?

Often, nothing. That’s what.

 

I’d like to share a viewpoint with you today.

Have you ever put something off? Something that you think would be a good idea, but you decide not to do it right now. And, you justify it to yourself by telling yourself that you’re waiting until the right time.

You’ll wait until you have more time. Until you retire. Until you have more money. Until… until… until…

Then what?

Often, nothing. That’s what.

The problem with “waiting until the right time” is that you are basically giving up your own power and responsibility. You are assigning power to outside circumstances, which serves to simultaneously weaken yourself.

Trust me, I know. 🙂 I’m not writing this post from some kind of ivory tower, where I proclaim to have it all figured out. I’ve procrastinated, too. I’ve put things off “until the right time”…. and in most cases, the “right time” never comes. And, on the flip side, those times in my life that I look on with the most pride are often the ones where I just said “f**k it, let’s do this”. I decided to DISAGREE with all those voices of “reason”, and take action anyway.

If we’re honest with ourselves, many of the big things we do in life there ISN’T a “right” time for. We just do it. And, it becomes “right”.

Hell, I’m the father of two young kids. Trust me, there is NO “right” time to have kids. No matter when the heck you do that, it is going to be hard and you’re going to make sacrifices. Yet, we do it anyway. Some of us get surprised when it happens, but we adjust, right?

The same goes for many other things.

Just in this online world, I see it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had people tell me about all the awesome online business plans they plan to do… later. When the time is right. When this happens, or when that happens.

Yeah, right. The RIGHT time to take action on your online business was YEARS ago. But, you can’t change the past, so the next best time is NOW. If you’re putting something off, then you’re letting yourself become a victim of circumstance.

The way I see it, time is divided into three main divisions: the past, the present and the future.

Well, you can’t change the past. So, don’t sweat it. All efforts to rewind the past are absolute wastes of time.

The present… this is the ONLY thing you control. You live in the here and now. Time itself is nothing but one big string of now’s.

The future? Well, that’s up to you. One thing is for sure… your future is your’s to create. But, the only thing that will create it… is what you do in the now. The future is just a “now” that hasn’t arrived yet.

fallacy-of-waiting

So, don’t wait around. Take action. Sure, the end goal might be off in the future, but only firm, purposeful and strategic action in the present is going to bring it about. If the future is a “now” that hasn’t arrived yet, and we know that only intentional action changes things, then it is a natural conclusion that if you don’t take intentional action, your future is going to look just like right now.

Do you agree?

4 Comments

  1. Totally agree, David! And you know something? Those voices of “reason” you decided not to listen to probably weren’t voices of reason anyway. But I guess that’s what you were trying to say. Thanks for this great post! We need this. 🙂
    krissy knox 🙂

  2. Hey David,

    There is never a right time for anything. I really resonate with your post, because i was waiting for a long time to ditch my corporate job so that I could concentrate on my business when what i really should have been doing was just going for it.

    We all do it, but if anyone can make a decision today to do something they have been waiting a long time to do, from just reading your post, then I guess you did what you set out to do today.

    Thanks for sharing,

    Beth 🙂

    1. Thanks, Beth. 🙂

      And, I don’t want anybody interpreting this post as a call to throw all logic out the window and just act. I mean, just quitting your day-job without a plan and some backup finances would be pretty dumb. 🙂 But, the point is… to have a plan. Instead of just waiting for the right time, you are operating on a pre-determined plan. Different thing.

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