The Five Minute Task Has Been Deferred Again
There is a task that will take five minutes. It has been on the list for eleven days. It has been deferred each time for reasons that were individually reasonable.
The task takes five minutes.
This has been verified. Not estimated, not guessed, not hoped. The task is known, the steps are clear, the resources are available. The person who needs to do it has done similar tasks before and knows that five minutes is accurate.
It has been on the list for eleven days.
The Record
Day one: added to the list. Day two: not the right moment. Day three: would do it after the other thing. Day four: forgot. Day five: remembered but was in the middle of something. Day six: planned to do it first thing. Day seven: first thing came and went. Day eight: considered doing it and decided to do it tomorrow, which was a decision that had already been made seven times.
Day nine: the task was looked at with recognition. Day ten: moved to the top of the list as a motivational gesture. Day eleven: still there.
The Paradox
The task takes five minutes. The decision to do the task has now taken longer than the task. The accumulated time spent thinking about the task, planning to do it, deferring it, re-adding it to the list, and reconsidering it has exceeded the task itself by a factor of several.
This calculation is available to the person at any time. They have not made it because making it would require them to sit with the absurdity without immediately acting on it.
The Counterfactual
In a parallel version of events, the task was done on day one. In this version, the task does not exist as a category of thought. The list is shorter by one item. The person has five additional minutes of mental space in which the task does not occupy any position.
This version is still available. It has been available for eleven days. The task remains five minutes long. The entry point to the counterfactual is always today.
The task will probably be done this afternoon. Or tomorrow morning. Or at some point this week when the conditions are right and the moment feels like the right moment rather than a moment that is technically indistinguishable from the right moment but somehow isn't.