Something remarkable happens when we make our peace with what is about to happen and just start doing it. It may not necessarily become easy, but it does become easier. This makes sense because resistance is expensive. It take a whole lot of energy to come-up with reasons why the world shouldn’t be the way it is and this energy will always be required because the world is the way it is – if you actually have to do something, you have to do it. If it is inevitable it will exist in your future until you take care of it.
One of the interesting things about required future actions is just how energy taxing they can be when you are not working on them. As soon as you know it exists, the energy burn begins immediately. The longer you put it off and kick it down the road, the more energy it will burn. The opposite is true, as soon as you start to complete it, you stop burning energy on it and begin to put energy towards it. The moment it is done, the transaction is completed.
Open loops are extremely taxing because our brain directs some energy towards the next and all actions that are needed to close the loop. In the book Getting Things Done they recommend that you make a list of all the things you have to do and then take some time to write the first next next that has to be completed to move the item towards completion. This closes the loop and stops the energy drain because documenting the task somewhere means you won’t forget it and knowing what the next first step is is a step towards completion. You may then spend time on figuring out the step after that one, and so what, that how you solve problems anyway.
I’m not talking about open loops here. I’m talking about the strong wish or desire to change reality to flip a required action into the not-required column. Chances are that if you could change reality that way you would already have done so. Since you cannot do this, it is a fact that any energy spend on this endeavour is simply wasted. Denying reality is not a practice that is helpful when one truly has no choice but to eventually do something.
In almost every case, if you had done it as soon as you realized it needed to be done, you would already have completed it. Worse case is that you have moved it forward, but the reality is more likely to be completion.
The term “get after it” applies perfectly. It is impersonal enough to paint the activity as just something you have to do and it does imply that the thing is there to be done. When it is right in front of you and a necessary part of your future, you may as well catch up to it and take it out!