Don't Leave for Tomorrow What You Can Do Today might be a proverb one of the Founding Fathers used to say, but is it still relevant for us today? In the 21st century, when one can take up a million daily tasks online, prioritization has become vital. And maybe you do have to leave for tomorrow what you can do today.
Raised in a culture of multitasking professionals, I want to do a thousand things in one day. I started writing this post, for instance, while I was doing research on 20th-century muckrakers and right after I had updated my LinkedIn profile. The thing is I never planned to write a blog post today or update my professional account—these opportunities emerged on the spur of the moment and seemed like great ideas. So, I decided not to postpone my work for tomorrow, right? Wrong.
The truth is I have become more distracted than ever when I am giving in to the temptation of being hyper efficient. Each time I stop in the middle of something to fit in another tiny project, my initial concentration vanishes. It is all one click away, I think, so I should just go ahead and do it while it is on my mind. But by the time I realize it, the day has passed and my my original work suffers.
Freelance writer Bree Nordenson, among many others, has discussed the harmful effects of multitasking. Distractions, she noted, significantly reduce our ability to focus on a single project and learn effectively. "Despite our best efforts," Nordenson wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review, "when we try to do more than one thing at once, we are less efficient and more prone to error."
Today, you can produce a lot. The challenge occurs when you have to strategically postpone projects for tomorrow.
Photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Images