My wife had gone shopping at a certain department store which shall remain nameless for the purposes of this article. It doesn’t really matter where she went, but she came home with several paper shopping bags that were left at the bottom of our stairs since some items had to be put away downstairs and some upstairs.
She and/or my daughters had finished emptying them, and one bag remained with one item in it. I’m assuming that what happened was that the last item was to be put away upstairs, but the bag was to be recycled downstairs. So whoever put it away whisked the lone item out of the bag and up the stairs, leaving the paper bag to be dealt with.
I had made several trips down and up the stairs, and once or twice the bag tipped over from the wind as I passed. I gently kicked it to the side so I could continue doing what I was doing. Then, as I was about to go upstairs again, the bag fell over again and blocked my way from climbing up. I was about to give it another kick to the side but stopped myself.
This bag was empty and someone had to deal with it. I kept interacting with it by moving it out of my way, but it was still in the way for me and everyone else. I realized I was just being lazy and procrastinating. So, I stopped, folded the bag, and brought it to the garage. Then, I put it in the cardboard box for paper recycling (we are such model citizens!) where it belonged.
After that, I went back upstairs to go about my business. Why should you care about my struggles with a paper bag? Because it’s such a parallel for life, but in a light and entertaining way, that maybe it will help people frame the message better.
I once read a piece from some business person/motivational speaker/success guru that said, “When you clean your desk and you pick up a piece of paper, deal with it. Don’t just move it around on your desk and leave it for later. Take care of it now and it will be done. That way you don’t end up touching it two, three, or more times.” That makes a lot of sense.
Most of the time, when we push something off, it’s because we don’t want to deal with it. It’s unpleasant, boring, perhaps even daunting. Quite often at work I’ll find that people haven’t done a certain aspect of their job because they aren’t so comfortable with it. They therefore find other things that they consider priority, or else, things that must be done anyway, so why not do them first and come back to the others? (Which rarely happens.)
What they are doing, though, is kicking the bag to the side. It doesn’t accomplish anything in terms of getting the bag where it needs to be, and truthfully, people probably feel a bit ashamed and embarrassed because they realize what they’re doing when they do it. “I should be taking care of this now, but I don’t really feel like doing it.” At least, that’s what they say if they’re honest with themselves.
They may say, “I have more important things to do,” but they know that they are kicking the can further down the road. You’ve probably heard that expression regarding economics. Politicians discuss debt and talk about kicking the can down the road. In some cases, the thought is that it will be someone else’s problem. They will have to deal with the mess you made, not you. But if you’re traveling down that road, it will still be your problem, even in the future. And that’s where the temptation to procrastinate sort of backfires.
You see, in all that time, while you keep kicking the can down the road, or in my case, the paper bag, you’re expending energy. It takes you time and effort to shuffle the papers and you end up dealing with the mess more than if you cleaned it up the first time.
It’s that way in relationships, character traits and even laundry. Yup. If you’d treated that stain and washed it right away instead of deciding to push it to the bottom of the hamper and do all your other loads of laundry first, you might have gotten it out. If you’d worked on your temper, gossiping tendencies or rudeness at the beginning, they’d be less a part of you and easier habits to break.
So learn from my struggles and don’t push off what you will eventually have to do anyway. If you focus your efforts, you will hit the target with much less effort, and you’ll be a better person to boot.
Jonathan Gewirtz is an inspirational writer and speaker whose work has appeared in publications around the world. He also operates www.JewishSpeechWriter.com, where you can order a custom-made speech for your next special occasion. Sign up for the Migdal Ohr, his weekly PDF dvar Torah in English. Email [email protected] and put “subscribe” in the subject.
