Why do I know what I need to do but still not do it?

There's a man in the group who spent the best part of a year not asking for something he wanted. Not one thing. The same non-ask, running in three different parts of his life at once.

And every single time he had a reason. She was busy. He was travelling. It wasn't the right week. Next month would be better once the thing at work settled down.

Every one of those was true, by the way. That's what makes this hard to catch.

The reason is always a good reason

If the excuse was rubbish you'd have spotted it years ago. Nobody keeps running a pattern that's obviously stupid.

What keeps it alive is that from the inside it doesn't look like avoidance at all. It looks like respect. Patience. Emotional intelligence. Being considerate of somebody else's week. Being realistic about your own.

I call it the considerate delay, and it is the most well-behaved thing you will ever do to yourself.

There's a version of this for every man I've worked with. One does it through consideration. One shuts the thought down before it finishes forming, so there's nothing to delay because there was never a want in the first place. One fixes the problem instead of asking whether the problem is his to fix. One does it himself because nobody else has his eye for detail. One learns more about it first.

Consideration, realism, responsibility, standards, preparation. Five respectable reasons. Same mechanism underneath all of them.

It's never the thing you think is stopping you

This part took me way longer to believe than I would have liked.

Whatever you've named as the obstacle, the obstacle isn't it. I've watched a man clear the exact thing he said was in the way, and within about a fortnight there was a new one, just as reasonable as the last.

every time you want something, there's always something that's preventing you from doing it now, and it's always a do-it-later

Daniel Lawson

I still do this. Few weeks ago I had a conversation with my partner that didn't finish properly, and I told myself I'd come back to it the next day. Then a few days went past and I caught myself thinking, do I even need to have it now? Maybe I just wait and see if it comes up again on its own.

That's it. It's the same thing, running in a man who teaches this for a living. It doesn't leave. You just get faster at noticing it.

So what is the delay for

I always say procrastination is not the problem. Procrastination is the solution protecting you from your problem.

Sit with that one a second, because it changes what you do next.

The not-doing is a solution. It's solving something. Usually it's solving the risk of finding out. Because right now, in the not-asking, you get to keep the answer open. She might say yes. They might say yes. The thing might work. As long as you haven't asked, all of it is still available, and none of it can be taken off the table.

Ask, and you find out. And finding out is the part the protective part of you is working very hard to prevent.

It's doing a wonderful job. It keeps you feeling fine today. It just also keeps you exactly where you are.

What moves it

Not more insight. You've got the insight. If understanding this was going to fix it, reading this far would have done it.

What moves it is a rep. One small, specific, decline-able ask, made to an actual person, this week.

Small matters. People hear this and go straight to the biggest conversation in their life, which is a great way to guarantee it doesn't happen. That's the elusive delay again.

So the three questions I'd put to you:

1. What's the thing you want that you haven't said?
2. Who specifically would you have to say it to?
3. What's the smallest version of it you could say this week and survive being turned down on?

Then go and find out what happens. Not what you predict will happen. What does.

The guy I mentioned at the start eventually asked. Took him nearly a year to get there and about ninety seconds to do. And he got a no.

And his line afterwards was the best thing anyone's said in that group all year: I don't see it as rejection, I see it as clarity.

That's what's on the other side of the ask. Not the yes. Information.

Common questions

Is this just procrastination?

It looks identical from the outside and it works differently underneath. Ordinary procrastination is about a task you don't fancy doing. This is about an outcome you're not ready to find out about, which is why it survives every productivity system you throw at it.

How do I tell a good reason from an excuse?

Test it by clearing it. If you remove the reason you named and a new one shows up within a couple of weeks, the reason was never the reason. That's the cleanest diagnostic I know and it costs you nothing but a fortnight.

What if I ask and they say no?

Then you know, which is more than you had before. The fear is almost always bigger than the event. Men tell me this constantly afterwards, in nearly the same words: the fear of it was far worse than the thing happening.

If this is you

The pattern underneath it is that you stopped asking for things a long time ago, got very good at not needing anything, and the delay is just how that shows up now you're grown.

It's much harder to change on your own than it looks, mostly because you'll talk yourself out of it in private and nobody will ever know. That's the reason I run groups rather than only working with people one to one. On your own, the not-asking never has to be admitted to anybody, so it just carries on. In a group somebody is expecting to hear what happened this week, and that turns out to be the difference between knowing the pattern and interrupting it.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman.