Wash the Damn Dish

Look, everybody soaks. It is often strategic and necessary. Fill that pan with hot, soapy water and leave it alone. Let time do the hard work that you can't of eroding grease and washing away lingering odors.

What I'm asking is are you a Soaker? Do you say "I'm going to let this soak." Regularly. For lots of stuff. Because as it turns out, with some intention and what my dad calls 'elbow grease' (I believe the dictionary calls it "effort"), a lot of what you're soaking can get clean in a short amount of time.

Being a Soaker is not about the act of soaking. It's about the lie you tell yourself when you transform "I don't feel like washing this right now" into "I'm going to let this soak." The lie that allows you to feel productive while rationalizing your own procrastination.

It will be easier to wash this after it soaks.

Yea.

Because it will be LATER.

And that's a problem for your future self.

Serial Soakers are the people leaving clean looking bowls in the sink at work you share with like 30 people. The people whose dishes pile up for days -- until all that soaking has to turn into actual washing anyway. People who assume as a knee-jerk reaction that doing something later will be easier than doing it now.

Will it really be easier later? How much?

It's like what Ze Frank once said about brain crack. It's better to reward ourselves now, to feel satisfaction at our good ideas, than to execute them and risk disappointment and failure.

The difference between a Soaker and a brain crack addict is that the addict only imagines the rewards of projects perpetually put off -- but the Soaker walks away confidently, perceiving inaction as action.

For the addict, the lie is: it's going to be perfect.
For the Soaker, the lie is: it's going to be easier to do later.
The addict celebrates his delayed success, the Soaker his strategy of delay.