I heard a good talk recently about addressing life's problems, and it included an analogy that I thought was a great illustration of how procrastination usually multiplies problems instead of solving them. The speaker said that she lives near the water, and her family enjoys all the recreational advantages that it offers, including canoeing. She admitted, though, that one threatening aspect of that lifestyle is the reptiles that find their way into her yard. According to the speaker, that threat can often make it pretty scary to turn over a canoe that has not been used for some time, even though her family always looks forward to enjoying the canoes after a long winter. The longer the canoe has been inverted, the scarier it is to turn it over since it is more likely that a snake will be under it and that the snake has grown to a healthy size. The moral of the story, of course, is that our problems are like that snake under the canoe: the longer we wait to address them, the bigger and scarier they become. Continue reading >