Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [20]
A not-quite-so-senseless anticipation may lay the groundwork for an irretrievably senseless fixation, however. Having begun too soon, we may run out of things to do before the project can be brought to completion. And then we’re tempted simply to sit and wait. We start our party preparations too early in the day and finish several hours before the guests are due to arrive—and then we fixate on their arrival. Had we not anticipated, we wouldn’t have given ourselves an opportunity to fixate.
The greater the amount of time by which we anticipate, the greater the opportunity for subsequent fixation. If we pack for a trip a week too soon, we run the risk of giving up the week to useless musings about the forthcoming venture. It’s as if we had already departed. And if we pack two weeks too soon, we take our mental leave two weeks before our body can follow.
At the other temporal extreme of the same phenomenon are miniature episodes wherein we anticipate by a few moments and then fixate for a few moments until the tide of events once again catches up with us. We get up from our seat on the bus before it’s necessary—and stand a while by the door. We take out our house key when we’re still a block away from the front door—and hold it stuck out before us, ready for action, as we walk down the street. More than one person has been seen to stand at the door of a bus with his keys in hand, looking for all the world as though he planned to unlock the bus to let himself out.
These momentary quirks are not very important in themselves. But they betoken a more general habit of mind that seriously interferes with optimal functioning. The person who takes out her keys too soon is the same one who arrives at the airport too early and sits. Instead of making her actions timely and suited to the circumstances, she follows a rigid pattern of beginning as soon as the task is formulated, doing as much as can be done at this early date, and then waiting, immobilized, until she can continue again. We would expect such mechanical behavior from a simple robot that was built for no other purpose than to turn keys in locks or travel to and from airports. A device of this kind might as well go to the airport right away and turn itself off until the next run. It has nothing else to do.
We’re never so prone to anticipation as when we draw up schedules and plans for the future. It’s true that we often need to plan what to do at a later time. But planning, like every other form of work, may also be premature. Plans that are made too soon are overwork because they take possibilities into account that would eliminate themselves in time. They’re likely to be reduced to prework by changing circumstances that force us to revise our expectations. And they’re liable to prove completely unnecessary, in which case the work of planning will have been in vain. The longer we wait before formulating our plans, the less likely we are to suffer these fates.
Of course we can’t postpone indefinitely. As with all other forms of work, there comes a time when further delay would be injurious to our cause. In the case of plans, this point can be precisely specified. The time to lay our plans for the future is when they have a bearing on what we are to do now. If the dentist’s receptionist asks us when we can come in for a checkup, we must immediately make a plan because the receptionist needs an answer now. If we contemplate an escape to the golf course, we may have to make a schedule for the rest of the week in order to see whether we can afford to take the day off now. What we do now may even depend on our plans for the distant future. We wouldn’t apply to medical school now unless we had some intention of becoming a doctor in several years’ time.
But plans that have no effect on our present activity are anticipatory. By definition, we have