“Future You” isn't coming to save you.

For the last year, I kept telling myself I was going to organize my garage.

Winter Me didn't want to deal with it. It was way too cold. Spring Me wanted to enjoy the nice weather. Summer Me was too hot. Now? Fall Me has college football.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around watching my favorite college team play, and I finally realized that I was never going to organize that damn garage.

Not because I didn't have time. Because I simply didn't want to do it.

But admitting that felt like failure. So instead, I spent twelve months pretending I was the kind of person who was going to have an organized garage someday.

Deferring the decision let me keep the identity without doing the work. And I see the same thing happening in business all the time.

Why we actually defer things

We tell ourselves we defer things because we're busy. Or tired. Or waiting for the right moment.

But that's not it.

We keep pushing things off so we don't have to admit that we're not going to do them.

When I say "I'm going to organize the garage this weekend" and then I don't, I have two choices:

Do it next weekend or admit I'm not going to. That's uncomfortable. That requires a decision.

But when I say "I'll handle it this Winter," I don't have to decide anything. I get to keep thinking of myself as someone who's going to have an organized garage without ever doing it or facing what it means if I don't.

The deferral is the decision. I just don't want to own it.

This shows up everywhere

I know a guy who's been planning to switch from hourly billing to value-based pricing in his consultancy for over a year.

He's read all the books, follows all the right people on X, and talks about it every time I see him at a cocktail party upstate.

But he hasn't changed a single proposal.

Last month, we went out for coffee together. I watched him open a client proposal, stare at a number for five minutes, then close his laptop. "I'll finish this later," he said. Two days later? Same hourly rate he always sends.

He's not waiting for more knowledge. He's waiting to become someone who's comfortable walking away from clients who won't pay what he's worth. But that person doesn't exist yet. So he keeps deferring.

Every month he waits to switch to value-based pricing costs him roughly $5,000 in revenue. That's a $60,000 a year loss because he’s uncomfortable.

And it's not just pricing. I see this same pattern with difficult conversations, hiring decisions, and business pivots that people know they need to make but keep pushing to "next quarter."

The compounding cost of waiting

But there’s a bigger lesson that I didn't understand for twelve months:

When you defer something, you're not just postponing it. You're actively making it worse.

That business partner conversation you need to have? It starts as "hey, I think we should adjust how we're working together." After ten months, it becomes "I've been silently resenting you for almost a year, I don't trust you anymore, and I'm not sure this works."

The deferred version is almost always worse than the original version.

And the big kicker is that Future You won't have more capacity to deal with it. Future You will almost surely have less.

If you have the capacity to do something hard and uncertain right now, that's probably the best capacity you're going to have. The longer you've been doing something the comfortable way, the harder it is to change. My friend has been billing hourly for fifteen years. Every month he doesn't switch makes switching feel more impossible.

What happened when I stopped pretending

Last week, I finally admitted I was never going to organize my garage myself.

So I hired someone to do it. They came over that day, spent three hours, and charged me $300.

And something clicked when I did that. If I wasn't going to organize the garage, what else was I never going to do? What else was I pretending about?

I admitted I wasn't going to learn Spanish. I've been saying "this year" for five years, so I deleted Duolingo from my phone. It felt like relief.

I admitted I wasn't going to start waking up at 5 a.m. to work out. I like working out at 9 a.m. I like working from Noon to 3 p.m. Why did I feel guilty about it? I shouldn't, so I decided I won't.

And I admitted I was deferring a specific conversation for over six months. The kind that starts with "I need to tell you something" and ends with a friendship being different than it was before. So I scheduled time that afternoon to make the call. It was miserably uncomfortable for about an hour, and then it was done.

The $300 I spent on the garage didn't just buy me an organized space. It bought me permission to stop lying to myself about who I actually am and what I actually want.

The 5-Day Decision Rule

Here's what I do now when I catch myself saying "I'll do it soon."

Step 1: List what you've been deferring for 3+ months

Write out everything you've been saying you'll do "soon" but haven't actually scheduled. Not active projects that need work. I’m talking about the things in the back of your mind that you mention in conversation but never act on.

Step 2: Ask yourself the uncomfortable question

For each task, ask: "If I admit I'm never going to do this, what does that say about me that I don't want to face?"

Write down the answer. That's the real reason you're deferring it.

Step 3: Decide in the next 5 days

You have two choices:

A) Schedule it in the next 5 days

If you actually want to do it, find time in your calendar in the next 5 days. Treat it like an urgent client meeting you can't move.

B) Admit you're not going to do it

Say it out loud: "I'm not going to do [thing]." Then either delegate it, find a different approach, or let it go completely.

The "I'll do it later" option is off the table because later never comes.

The bottom line

My garage is organized now.

But the real win wasn't the garage. It was finally admitting that Winter Me, Spring Me, Summer Me, and Fall Me aren't different people. They're all just me, right now, deciding what's actually worth doing.

Stop treating Future You like they have unlimited capacity to deal with everything Present You doesn't want to handle. Either do the thing now, find a different way to get it done, or admit you're not going to do it and let it go.

So here's my question for you: What's the one thing you've been deferring for 3+ months?

Reply to this email and tell me. I read every response. And if enough people share similar patterns, I might write about it in a future newsletter.

(Sometimes the hardest part is just saying it out loud to someone else.)

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.

P.S. The 5-Day Decision Rule works for business decisions too. That pricing change? That difficult conversation? That hire you keep pushing off? Same framework. Schedule it or admit you're not doing it. Future You isn't coming to save you.