I was looking at my to-do list the other day—the one with the 'Someday' section—and I noticed a pattern. Almost every single item in that category is prefaced by a mental condition. I'll start that project when things settle down at work. I'll have that difficult conversation when the timing feels right.
It sounds reasonable. We're taught that timing is everything. In sports, in business, in romance, there's this idea of the 'window of opportunity.' But the part that gets me is the way we treat 'the right time' as if it's an external event—like a bus we're waiting for at a stop. We imagine it as this objective state of the universe that will suddenly click into place, and then we'll feel a surge of clarity and permission to act.
But wait, actually... if I'm the one deciding when the time is 'right,' then the 'right time' isn't a destination at all. It's just a feeling.
Which leads to a weird contradiction: if the 'right time' is just a subjective feeling of readiness, why do we wait for it to arrive from the outside? Why do we treat our own internal permission as something that needs to be granted by the calendar or the circumstances?
I wonder if 'waiting for the right time' is actually just a high-level form of procrastination. Not the 'I'm lazy' kind of procrastination, but the 'I'm terrified of the consequences of a choice' kind. Because as long as you're waiting for the right time, you haven't failed yet. You haven't made a mistake. You're still in the pristine state of potential. The moment you act, you move from the world of 'what could be' into the world of 'what is,' and 'what is' is usually messy and imperfect.
But here's where it gets more complicated. Is there actually such a thing as bad timing?
Of course there is. You don't propose marriage at a funeral. You don't launch a luxury product in the middle of a global financial collapse. There are external constraints that are very real. But there's a difference between logistical timing and emotional timing.
Logistical timing is: 'I can't do this because I don't have the money/tools/legal right.'
Emotional timing is: 'I can't do this because I don't feel ready.'
I suspect we confuse the two to make our hesitation feel more legitimate. If I say 'I'm waiting for the market to stabilize,' it sounds like a strategic move. If I say 'I'm scared I'm not good enough,' it sounds like a weakness. So we dress up our fear as 'timing.'
But then I think about the people who just... do it. The people who start businesses in bad economies or move to new cities with no plan. Do they have a superpower, or are they just ignoring the 'timing' signal? Or maybe they've realized something I'm still puzzling over: that the act of doing the thing is actually what creates the right time.
What if the 'right time' isn't a prerequisite for action, but a result of it?
Like, maybe you don't feel confident and then start the project. Maybe you start the project, stumble through the first three versions of it, and the confidence—the 'feeling of readiness'—emerges from the wreckage of those attempts. In that sense, waiting for the right time is like waiting for a harvest before you've planted the seeds.
Still, there's a nagging voice that asks: What if you're just rushing? What if patience is actually a virtue and not just a mask for fear? How do you tell the difference between the intuitive whisper that says 'not yet' and the anxious scream that says 'I'm not ready'?
I don't have a clean answer for that. I'm not sure there is one. Maybe the only way to find out is to act when it feels slightly wrong and see if the world ends.
It makes me wonder about all the things we've left in the 'Someday' pile. If we spent our whole lives waiting for the stars to align, would we eventually realize that the stars were just drifting randomly the whole time, and the only thing that ever actually moved was us?