Why do I only get things done when my hair is on fire?

Where the question came from

A man I coach told me this week that he only gets things done when his hair is on fire. He waits until the last second, because there will always be a better time. He finds a way to make it work, but he feels worse about it every time, and he wants it to change.

Red, yellow and green

I look at all of this in red, yellow and green. Green is amazing: things are good, we're going. Red is catastrophic: I'm getting a divorce, and if I don't do something to change, she's going to leave me. I hear that once in a while, but it's rare. Most guys I encounter live in the green and the yellow.

Yellow is the little things. They're kind of annoying, and over time they start to deteriorate. Of course I love my wife; I just don't always do the most loving things. In business, I get behind and leave things to the last minute. I know I shouldn't, but it's not really costing me anything other than my own frustration. Fitness is the same. If I stuff a Twinkie in my mouth right now, it does nothing that bad to me in the moment. But if I Twinkie myself every single day for the next 10 years, I may not live to see my grandkids born. And if I do, I won't be able to run around with them.

You are not delaying the pain

Here is the question I asked him: do you realize that when you delay the things you delay, you're not delaying the pain? You're actually making it worse.

You find a way to make it work. The work gets done. But you feel worse about yourself. And when you feel worse about yourself, you crawl further into that space: I'm not good enough. Things aren't going well. I might as well not. I'm just the type of person who keeps pushing it off. That is head trash.

A good season hides it

My fear for a man like this is that when things get good, it's way easier to slip. The head trash gets masked. The marriage is good. You're healthy, even if you're not where you want to be. The business keeps coming. Even when you don't say it out loud, all of that justifies the fact that you can just keep pushing it off. I don't like it, but it's okay.

These seasons don't last. "In the world you will have tribulation" (John 16:33, ESV). When something happens, you will be susceptible to crumble under the weight of not just that event, but all the little things you were able to get through because it was fine. A future event that may not even be that bad becomes ten times worse, because all the little things are suddenly magnified.

The other side is just as costly. You are leaving so much on the table that you could be reaping.

Willpower is not the answer

There are really only two ways this changes. One is a ridiculous amount of willpower. Some people possess it, and I wish nobody would tap into it. The other way is the one I encourage: get to a place where you stop negotiating with yourself.

And it can't be solved overnight. That is probably the most frustrating part. High performers get to a spot where they say, I'm going to dive in, make a commitment, build my plan and knock it all out. Then we find ourselves back in the same spot, because it's too much to take on all at once. 75 Hard is an incredible program. Nobody can live it. Even the man who created it says he can't stay on it forever. But that's how we design our lives. Don't do that. It's too much to bear.

Identity before behavior

When he said he only gets to things when his hair is on fire, I asked him one question. I already knew the answer. Is that who you want to be? No. But you've accepted it. You've accepted that's who you are. I don't like it, but it's just who I am, and I'll figure out a way to get it done.

So this is an identity issue before it is a behavior issue, and that has to get addressed first: That is not who I am. That is not who I was created to be.

We work on this with something I call an anchor identity statement: I'm the type of man that... It has to stay front and center. Most men like this carry a high level of integrity. They don't want to let themselves down, their wives down, or anyone else. They let it slip because it doesn't stay front and center. So keep going back to it: who do you really want to be, and what are you willing to do to maintain that? Not from a willpower perspective. To what lengths are you willing to go to commit to it?

This is what we mean by Settled Identity, the milestone a man reaches at the end of Grounded in Faith: knowing who God created you to be before you try to change what you do.

Start small, one habit at a time

Take a step back and look at the little things that eat at you the most, the ones you get the most frustrated with. Rattle off three to five things that trip you up on a regular basis. Then start working on them one by one as new habits.

The one move for today

Write one line that starts with "I'm the type of man that." Under it, list the three to five little things that trip you up most. Pick one and work on it as a new habit for the next two weeks before you touch the next.