We don’t procrastinate because we’re lazy — we procrastinate because we can’t picture who we’d become on the other side of the thing we’re avoiding. So we substitute research, reviews, and “more information” for the imagination we’re missing, and call it preparation.
I was twenty-six when I moved somewhere I didn’t know the idiomatic expressions, didn’t know how things worked, didn’t know the weather wouldn’t actually be that cold, and that you needed a wardrobe to fit every climate known to man. I understood the generalities. That was about it. And yet, I just jumped in without knowing anything.
Mistakes, absolutely. Situations that, looking back, were ridiculous. Genuinely embarrassing. But it was in that not-knowing, in those mistakes, that I built a muscle. A muscle that could actually withstand moving forward.
As I was going through it, and more so as I look back, I could laugh at myself. I gave myself permission to figure things out. I listened, I learned from outside myself, and I learned, the hard way, that idiomatic expressions actually matter.
I was reminded of this recently by listening to something from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, a story about a friend, a doctor, lifting weights well past the point his body was screaming at him to stop. His mind kept saying go, go, go, even as his muscles trembled under the bar. Covey thought the guy was going to collapse under it. He didn’t. Afterward he explained: that’s exactly the point. It’s in that push, past comfort, that muscle fibers actually rupture. And it’s in that rupture that new fiber gets built.
Here’s what I think we’ve lost the muscle for, in an age where information is everywhere: of not knowing.
We’ve overdeveloped the muscle of knowing, the need to know, the have to know, the I can’t move until I know, and let the muscle of not-knowing go limp completely. That “limpness” triggers angst and anxiety that creates shivers, and overthinking.
I grew up before the internet made everything searchable. We had the New York Times, Business Week, whatever the TV gave us. If I didn’t know something, I found out by doing it, not by researching it into the ground first. Now, wanting to try a new flavor of ice cream turns into checking reviews. Wanting to visit a new store turns into Googling whether it’ll be crowded. We collect information that doesn’t actually matter, and call it preparation.
There’s a moment in the Quran that captures this precisely. Bani Israel were told by Allah SWT to simply sacrifice a cow. That’s it. Instead, they asked what color the cow needed to be?. What was its age? What type? Question after question, when a single obedient act would have sufficed (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:67-71). All that asking wasn’t diligence. It was stalling, dressed up as thoroughness, and honestly, showing a disbelief in Allah SWT underneath it.
What in our life today does this same trait show up?
I think about this every Ramadan when I’m visiting Morocco, watching the bread line at the bakery before iftar. There’s no real order to it. No line, technically. Everyone crowds the counter, hands up, money out, and somehow, everyone gets their bread. Nobody’s offended by the chaos. Nobody Googles ahead of time whether the bakery will be busy. They just go, trusting they’ll get what they need when they get there.
We’ve become, I think, too soft for that kind of trust. We want the itinerary before the trip, the reviews before the meal, the certainty before the attempt. Somewhere in there, we’ve replaced actual experience with somebody else’s experience of a thing, and started calling that knowledge.
Honestly, I get this attitude constantly from potential clients who want results, some have outright asked me, so what is it, exactly, that you do for people? Although a fair question, the underlying theme here is is the result tangible? And are these results tangible so that I can justify it to those around me?
Here’s my answer: I coax out the version of you that’s powerful but has stayed dormant, because it’s just more comfortable to keep leaning on the abilities you’ve already got. If you’re only ever leaning on your present strengths, you’re moving through your life on an old operating system. The results of this vary because your version of success is different from another.
This answer for many isn’t sufficient, however, those who have worked with me, together we formulate a winning strategy that cultivates success that can only be felt, embodied and only then shows up in their life, work, and vision.
Which brings me to procrastination, because I don’t think what I’ve been describing is really about information at all. It’s a disease of the heart, and Islamic tradition names it plainly. There’s a du’a the Prophet ﷺ recited morning and evening, seeking refuge from al-ajz, the inability to act, and al-qasl, laziness. Morning and evening, not once in a while, because this isn’t an occasional stumble. It’s something that can quietly take over a life.
Imagine solving problems at work today the exact same way you did in middle school. Weaker results, obviously. But bring your middle-school self’s abilities forward and combine them with decisions that actually require you to step outside your comfort zone now, and you’ll find success in ways you couldn’t have imagined from that old operating system.
The Prophet ﷺ also described the wise, successful person as one who holds themselves accountable, for their time, their actions, everything of value, and prepares for what comes after. The foolish person, by contrast, follows their own desires and leans on God only at the very end, staying up all night to finish something, then telling themselves at the last minute that they’ve done their part and now it’s in Allah’s hands. That’s not Tawakkul. That’s a rushed excuse for wearing tawakkul’s clothes.
So here’s my theory, and it’s the piece I actually want you to sit with:
I don’t think we procrastinate because we’re lazy. I think we procrastinate because we cannot picture our future self. We don’t know what she looks like, feels like, sounds like on the other side of the thing we’re avoiding. And what we cannot picture, we cannot move toward. So we stall in the not-knowing, collecting information as a substitute for imagination, because information feels safer than an unknown future we can’t yet see.
Society tells us our current self, our current solution, our current advice, can’t possibly be enough, because we don’t have the [fill in the blank: degree, certification, knowledge, experience]. And that’s exactly what fuels the dire need to go get more. More information. More proof. More permission.
Here are the signs, if you’re wondering whether this is you: you research a decision far past the point where more research would change it. You check reviews before trying something you already know you want. You’ve read the books, taken the courses, and the thing itself still hasn’t started. You feel busy, productive even, and yet the actual task sits exactly where it did last week.
I’m not handing you a fix today. I just want you to notice it. Next time you catch yourself reaching for one more search, one more opinion, one more piece of information you don’t actually need, pause and ask: am I preparing, or am I avoiding meeting the person I’d become if I just did the thing?
Want to bypass all this? I’d love to chat.
With you on becoming the person Allah will be proud of.
Coach Gemi, Leadership | Identity Coach
Learn more about me here