Do Your Future-Self a Favor

The other day, before I left my apartment, I straightened up.

We're not talking deep-cleaning here. Just a quick once-over to make sure everything was pretty much in its rightful place.

This may not sound like a big deal, and, in actuality, it probably took me about five minutes. But, at the time, I felt ready to walk out the door, and I didn't really want to slow my momentum to straighten my apartment.  

However, I paused for a moment, and thought about what I wanted to feel like when I came home that evening...

I knew I would be arriving home around 6:45, and I had a Skype appointment scheduled for 7 pm. So, what did I want to do with those fifteen minutes? Did I want to straighten my apartment, or did I want to relax or have a bite to eat?

I wanted to relax! 

But, in order to give my future-self that opportunity, it meant taking the time to slow down and straighten my apartment in the present moment.

Even with the slight "delay," I still arrived early to my lunch-hour coaching session.

Now, as it happens, my student showed up having completed about 25% of her assigned homework. She was supposed to complete one full Math 1 SAT Subject Test (50 problems)  and to begin working through the review exercises at the beginning of her prep book. She'd stopped after problem 15 in the test and not even looked at the review exercises.

I was, needless to say, a little surprised.

We discussed her intentions.  I asked her what she was hoping to accomplish in our session.

"I'll do test," she answered.

"Really?" I asked. "You have four hours with me a week, and you want to spend two of those hours working independently?" (She has extended time accommodations—most students taking this test have an hour.)

She didn't quite know what to say.

So, I told her the story of straightening my apartment.

There are times in life when we ought to do things that we aren't necessarily in the mood to do. Now, sometimes there isn't an option. We have to suck it up. 

But, other times, we convince ourselves that there's a grey area--maybe just maybe we can "get away with" not doing what we know we are meant to do.  

The "get away with" is a key part of the thought process. 

Often the things that we try to "get away with" doing or not doing don't serve our highest good, and we know it.  {Tweet It}

In those moments when we think we might be able to "get away with" not doing a task—going for the run, doing the test prep, straightening the room—that we had otherwise intended to do, or doing it half-heartedly, we ought to stop and think about not what our present self wants, but what our future self would want.

My student's future self wanted to make the most of her coaching session and to know that she'd done her best within the test prep process. But, her decision to skimp out on the homework was incongruent with that intention.

If she had paused to shift her perspective, she might have acted differently, doing the homework in order to receive the coaching session that she wanted. That's not to say that she had a bad coaching session—we began working through her study guide's review problems—but she certainly didn't receive the feedback she might have had she done the work in advance...  

Then again, maybe the lesson she received was exactly the one she needed, even if it had little to do with math.

If you want to "do your future self a favor" and get a leg-up on your test prep, stay up-to-date with my blog posts, and receive my Organize Your Test Prep e-mail and PDF series, be sure to...

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