I have always struggled against the forces of procrastination when there’s a deadline or work project that is long dated in nature. This was particularly tough in the early years of University, where you’re essentially reliant on self-motivation and drive to study and complete your work assignments. Despite having decent visibility into assignment due dates and exam dates well in advance, I nearly always waited until the last minute to pull something together or cram for an exam.

On the other hand, I’ve always excelled at working hard in short bursts, particularly leading up to an urgent deadline. Working in Investment Banking and Private Equity were the ideal conditions for me. Most work assignments tend to be short-term and/or high-pressure in nature, so there isn’t as much of an opportunity for procrastination. You’re forced to deliver work towards a hard deadline, and there are severe consequences to missing those deadlines. Let’s say you’re reviewing an investment in a company. Often, you’re competing with multiple other investment firms, and working towards a pre-set deadline to submit a bid or purchase offer. You can’t show up late or ask for extra time (“Oops, sorry”). It’s simply not an option.

As a result, it was a big transition joining Avanti and the corporate world. Not to suggest there are no high pressure, short-term deadlines for projects in the corporate world (there are), but on a relative basis, the consequences of delay are less severe, and the nature of the work seems to lend itself more to sustained long-term efforts to be successful. It’s much more of a marathon than a series of sprints. As a result, I’ve really had to train myself to be better at pushing forward projects with long-dated deadlines and less severe consequences of delay. I’ve found it’s primarily a mental game. Once you get into the work, the reality is often much easier than we make it out to be in our thoughts.  

Over the years, I’ve gotten significantly better at managing this. A big part of it is practice. But the important realization I’ve had, is how real the mental cost and burden is of continually thinking about the work you need to do before doing it. Let’s say your boss tells you she needs a PowerPoint presentation prepared and you have three weeks to complete it. If you used to be like me, you would wait 2 weeks and 4 days before starting to pull it together; however, over the course of those two+ weeks, you probably spend several hours thinking about the work, even if you haven’t started on it. In any given week, the time spent thinking about the things you need to do can outweigh the amount of time it takes to actually do them.

Nike really nailed it with their slogan, “Just Do It”. If you can ‘Just Do It’, you’ll relieve much of the wasted thought exercise of thinking about it. Our CFO has a similar, great quote she shared with me, which is “Love it so you can leave it”. The sooner you complete the daunting task, the faster you can leave it behind. Keeping this in mind has helped change my perspective and been a powerful motivator to getting things done, earlier (even if it’s still an uphill battle).

I’ve found this is equally as true regarding tough conversations, whether with employees, your boss, or a peer, as it is with completing work projects. Both have a real mental cost of delay and the sooner you can get to it, the sooner you can leave it behind.

Two weeks ago today, Julia and I were supposed to fly to Israel for a wedding. Sadly, due to the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7, the wedding and all the events were cancelled. In addition to the stress and fear we felt for our dear friends and their families, many of which had already arrived in Israel from North America, we found ourselves in a predicament of having no idea what to do next. Since we were already in London for a weekend stopover en-route, and our vacation was planned, communicated, and coordinated with work, we found ourselves with an open-ended schedule for the week and the freedom to go anywhere in Western Europe (our only real constraint, since coincidentally we had a second wedding to attend in Italy the week following).

At first, there’s something quite romantic about having the feeling that anything is possible; “the world is your oyster”. The reality though, at least for me, is the open-ended nature of the opportunity and feeling of endless possibility is actually a bit overwhelming! To start from scratch introduces a whole host of new decisions to be made. Even once we decided where to go next (Bologna), we had to coordinate hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc. We spent a meaningful amount of each day researching what to do and were constantly seeking info on our phones. During our first week, my daily average phone use was up nearly 100%, relative to a reduction of ~50% I typically see on vacation. Of course, we had a wonderful week, and you can’t really go wrong eating your way around Italy, even if you’re faced with hard decisions, like whether to eat mortadella or prosciutto cotto on your sandwich.

The whole experience reminded me of a quote and concept I like, which is “discipline equals freedom”. Even though the idea of having immense flexibility and freedom to do whatever you want is appealing, there is real value to reducing the number of decisions you have to make. Particularly ones that aren’t very meaningful and are unlikely to have a significant impact on anything other than the immediate to short term. If you can reduce the number of smaller, less meaningful decisions you make in a given week or month, you create more mental space and capacity for the smaller number of meaningful decisions that arise. And if you consider the many, many decisions you are regularly making, there are likely only a select few that deserve real consideration and will have a meaningful impact. Save your decision making capital for the ones that matter.

A role model is someone you look up to. Someone you deeply respect. Someone who’s behavior you’re interested in emulating. A role model helps demonstrate excellence in areas you’re deeply interested in and passionate about. Observing them, learning from them, and replicating their behaviors is a compelling way to hone your own skill set. Role models can show up in your personal and professional life.

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