Introduction
I moved recently. I knew my hands would be full with packing, moving, and unpacking for a while, so I put off a few things I had in progress (my usual work, mostly). Of course, the important and urgent things have to get done whether or not you're moving. But anything I could reschedule, I pushed to after the move.
Things have finally settled down, so I spent yesterday and today working through all of it, and most of what I'd postponed is now done.
But something struck me while doing it. My thinking had been that doing something now or later doesn't change the work itself, so if that's true, then doing it after the move — when I'd be settled both physically and mentally — should be the most sensible option. And each individual task really was the kind of thing that would have just moved along normally if the move hadn't happened. But when I actually got to them, things didn't go smoothly. Almost everything took more effort than it would have if I'd just kept going.
Starting from "Now, where was I?"
What I learned is that when you come back to something, you can't just pick up where you left off. I had left notes on some of them, but reading those notes doesn't bring back what I was actually thinking at the time.
When you stop, you still have it all in your head — what you were about to check, where you were stuck, what you meant to do next. But after being away for a while, that fades. So restarting means first going back through old logs and rebuilding what past-me had been thinking.
This quietly eats up time. And you never remember all of it. You end up reconsidering things you wouldn't have had to think about back then, or redoing a check you'd already finished once. It's not just a matter of time — I think it shows in the quality of what comes out, too.
The more I had things sorted out before stopping, the bigger this effect seemed to be. The sorted-out state itself doesn't exist in any tangible form, so it disappears the moment you let go. What's left is just the work in progress.
Carrying It Around Wears on You Too
That was all about restarting, but there's something else that happens while you're still carrying it.
Once you've set a date and moved something into the future, in theory you shouldn't have to think about it anymore. In practice, that's not how it goes. There was always a low-level "I have to do this once the move is over" sitting in the back of my mind. When I'd look over my upcoming schedule before bed, there it would be, and I'd find myself going through them one by one — right, that one's there, better not forget it.
The date is already set, so checking doesn't change anything. No work has moved forward either. But I'm still holding it in mind, and that quietly wears on you.
Conclusion
This turned into a somewhat rambling post, but I wanted to write down what I noticed around my move, partly as a note to myself.
I'd started out assuming that shifting the timing was all it was — the work stays the same, so nothing really changes. But once I actually went through it, a fair number of downsides showed up. Of course, events like a move are unavoidable, and situations where you have to postpone things come up all through life. Still, knowing the cost of postponing — the kind I felt this time — makes it easier to see the problems coming, and it changes how you decide whether to postpone in the first place. Among the things I'd waved off as "same either way," there were probably some I'd have been better off pushing through and finishing, even at some cost.
That said, what you can and can't do depends on the situation, so I'll just try to carry this lesson forward!
Thanks for reading!
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