Pay Now or Pay Later

Every night before I go to bed I stretch for 5 - 6 minutes. I stretch not because I want to, but because I have restless leg syndrome. I stretch my calves, my hamstrings, and sometimes my glutes. If I don’t, and sometimes even if I do, my legs will ache with a nervous energy mimicking anxiety. And I can’t fall asleep.

I’ve been doing it for so long now that it’s part of my night time routine. But I hate doing it. Most nights all I want to do is get right into bed. Part of the reason I hate doing it is because it takes time and a little bit of extra effort. I know that after I floss, brush, and pee, I have to stand at the foot of the bed and go through my routine, while my fiancé gets tucked in.

It’s only 5 minutes, but when I’m ready to go to bed it feels like such burden. Which is why I sometimes skip it. Pray my legs don’t bother me, and jump into bed. But I almost always pay for it. Tossing and turning until the aching in my legs becomes too unbearable and I’m forced to get up and stretch.

But what’s the tradeoff? If I stretch, 9 out of 10 times I am able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep. If I don’t stretch, 9 out of 10 times I’m tossing and turning for 10 - 20 minutes before I get up to stretch anyway.

So if I stretch, it costs me 5 minutes. If I don’t stretch, it costs me an additional 10 - 20 minutes.

Yes it’s annoying. Yes I wish I didn’t have to do it. But sometime you have to do things you don’t want to do. And our lives are filled with examples just like this one each day. When putting in the minimum amount of effort required in the beginning will save us time and effort in the end. But most of the time we still don’t do it.

You really want to be healthy and lose weight, but you don’t want t take the time to prepare lunch for work. So you’re forced to pick something up. Something that is not as healthy. More expensive. And cuts into your lunch break as you wait for it to be made.

You want to get active and start exercising but you don’t want to wake up early to fit in a workout. Days, weeks, months go by, and before you know it you’ve gained more weight, and now you have to dig yourself out of a bigger hole, magnifying the effort required.

You don’t want to waste time going to the DMV to get your license renewed, so you put it off. As the expiration date of your license gets closer you stress about it. Then you miss the renewal deadline. Now you have to go to the DMV anyway, and now you have a bigger fee to pay.

Your shoulder is bothering you, but you don’t want to go to the doctor. So you push through it. One day you feel severe pain running through your shoulder and your bicep. A few months ago you had a small tear, now you have a full tear that requires surgery, physical therapy, and months of being inactive.

Over and over in our lives we create more work for ourselves because we’re unwilling to put the effort in at the beginning. When the issue first arises. When the thought first crosses our mind. But what feels like work and a waste of time now is actually an investment and insurance that you won’t have to deal with it later on down the line.

Pay now or pay later. Your choice.