The Best Time, to Do Everything, is NOW.

So it turns out that one of the most common human characteristics, the desire to procrastinate, or avoid doing things that one fears or finds distasteful, is actually fatal in the long run.  It destroys strength, success, power, influence, and self-esteem.  I suffered from this pernicious trait for many years, and I suspect each reader of this book, does, or has, suffered from it as well.  I have run a small law practice for many years, the the amount of suffering that procrastination caused me, and the loss of income and reputation I endured because of it, are enough to make me cry just remembering how much better I could have been.  Of course, I was always nails at organizing - goddamn, could I burn hours getting my client files in order, making sure my contacts database was up to date, making to-do lists and planning my day. But always, somehow, the hard stuff - the drafting of difficult pleadings, the client meetings at which I had to deliver bad news, the contentious negotiations, the trips to the prisons to interview clients in custody - always got kicked to the last possible time.  The catch is, those things didn't go away.  They were still there, they still needed to be done, and they did, of course, eventually get done.
They got done, but at a cost much greater than they needed to carry.  When you put off the hard, unpleasant stuff, several things happen.  First, molehills grow into mountains.  The unpleasant nature of the task becomes magnified, your fear of it grows and grows and grows.  People actually have nervous breakdowns due to the fear they allow to build up regarding things that they must do.  Second, through your delay, you insure that you have much less time to get something done, and therefore, the quality of your work suffers.  You simply can't produce the level of work in two hours that you could have produced if you had started earlier and invested more time.  Third, putting a task off generates more tasks that you want to put off.  Say, for instance, that I have a very lengthy, detailed brief to research and write.  Say further that I fear the effort involved, and put it off.  What happens next?  Well, I have to ask the court for an extension.  Try it sometime, its stressful in and of itself. I have to field calls from clients (or avoid them, more likely) wondering when in hell am I going to finish the work I promised to perform.  Put it off long enough, and a malpractice suit or ethical complaint is the ultimate result.  Procrastinate enough, and you earn, and get tagged with, the reputation of being a lazy-ass.
The key, then, is not to let those molehills become mountains.  They way to do that is simple to understand, but harder to travel.  The way is - DO EVERYTHING NOW. Read it again: DO EVERYTHING NOW.  Of course, the observant reader will say, "Murphy, what the hell are you talking about.  You can't do everything now, just like you can't be in two places at once."  But you can do everything now, and I'll show you what I mean by that, and how to do it, Stay tuned.