My Friend “Tomorrow”

On Lina's phone is a five-year-old sentence. It has followed her from one phone to the next: “When things settle down, I’ll start the design course.” One evening she opened it and, for the first time in years, didn't close it. Below it were a dentist's appointment and her sister's gift. Above it was Thursday's work list.

From the kitchen, her husband called, “Does the Minister of Finance need tea?” “A week with nothing to do,” she said. He brought the glass, set it on a small saucer, and sat at the edge of the desk. Her finger moved to the sentence about the course. The day she'd written it, she'd told herself, “After I get married.” Once she was married, she'd put it off until they were settled at home. Then it was after the promotion. The promotion came. The sentence stayed where it was.

She took the old notebook out of the desk drawer, set it beside the glass, and didn't open it. She opened the course website: three blank fields and a payment button. She stared at the fields, then closed the site and told her husband, “Tomorrow.”

There is a sentence in the notes on your phone that has lived there for years: “I'll start tomorrow.” You moved it from an old phone to a new one. Not a single letter has changed.

Why do we trust the person waiting in this “tomorrow,” someone we have never met?

Putting things off may be an escape from an unpleasant feeling now, rather than just laziness. We dump the task on someone we call “tomorrow me.” We treat him as stronger than us and less busy. When he arrives, he'll be you, with much the same tiredness and a list one task longer.

In his book “The Procrastination Equation,” Piers Steel reviews dozens of studies exploring what lies behind our delays¹.

The Painkiller That Wears Off After Five Minutes

The common idea is that procrastination is a problem with time management. But some researchers have viewed it from a very different angle: a way to repair your mood now, rather than manage your time later².

What feeling came with the last task you put off: boredom, anxiety about failing, or doubt about its value? When you close it and open something else, relief arrives at once.

You are rewarded for escaping it.

If your mood weighs on you every day, chronic procrastination may be linked to low mood or depression, or to difficulty paying attention. A professional can help you more than this chapter can.

Tomorrow’s Stranger

In a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants rated traits describing themselves now and ten years in the future, and traits describing a famous person at those same two times. Activity in a brain region associated with thinking about the self was lower when they thought about their future selves than when they thought about themselves now³.

You may feel a distance between yourself and your future self, as though you're thinking about someone else⁴, making it easy to burden that person with what you don't want to carry today.

Your mind values what's in front of you more than what will come later. This is “present bias”⁵.

Does that mean every delay is an escape? No.

Sometimes delaying really is a wise decision: waiting for your paycheck to buy what you need, or waiting until you've recovered from a cold to run again.

A wise delay has a condition you can name precisely. Escape has a vague condition: “When things settle down,” or “When I get my life in order.”

“There are two blessings that many people are deceived into losing: health and free time.” (al-Bukhari 6412)⁶.

A Real Friendship with Tomorrow

Your friendship with “tomorrow me” begins when you lighten his load instead of dumping everything on him.

Thomas Carlyle wrote: “'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.”⁷.

Three Blank Fields

Before she finished Thursday's work, Lina opened the registration page again. On a sheet of paper she wrote, “I'll sign up tonight and get everything organized.” “This time I won't put it off,” she told her husband. “What's the first thing?” he asked. She looked at a long list: the course fee, the lesson time, the design software, a space on the desk. She turned the sheet over. Nothing on the back. She reached for her phone to look for another, cheaper course, then put it back beside the glass. On the page in front of her, the name field was still blank. The promise for tonight filled the whole front of the sheet.

Lina filled in her name and email within two minutes. At the payment field, she stopped. She opened the budget list and closed the course page. Her husband saw the screen go dark. “How far did you get?” he asked. “As far as my fear that I'll pay and then not show up,” she answered.

She went back to the “If you fall” line. On the back of the paper, she wrote the feeling, then a smaller action: check the installment amount tomorrow after a glass of tea. She didn't look for a different course that night. She kept her name and email saved.

The next day, when her husband put his glass on its saucer, she opened the payment page and completed it. The first lesson's date appeared: three weeks away, on Wednesday evening. She wrote it beside the deadline for Thursday's work, rather than on some imaginary empty day. “I don't need a quiet week to fill in a field,” she said.

Her husband asked, “And your father? When will you tell him?” Her finger held still over the calendar. “After the first lesson,” she said.

An Appointment with the Stranger

Open your notes app and find the oldest “tomorrow” sentence in it. Then one question: what feeling are you escaping when you put it off? Boredom? Fear of failure? Doubt that you deserve it?

If you finish a small part of it now, before closing this page, write a sentence beneath it for tomorrow's you: “I've started it for you. Keep going.”

After a week, return to the same sentence. Did the feeling shrink when you made the task smaller, or are you still waiting for a condition you can't name?

That same night, Lina's phone screen lit up with the name “Dad.” The university notebook lay open in front of her at the page of logos. She looked at the name and didn't reach for the phone. It stayed lit until it went dark.