Permission Granted
I think I’ve been a procrastinator my whole life.
Not in the “I don’t care” way. More in the I swear I work better like this way.
Like finishing my algebra homework on the bus at 6:45 in the morning. Spiral notebook balanced on my lap. Pencil moving fast. First period looming. Just enough time to not have a missing assignment on my record. Or worse, anything less than an A.
I told myself it was time management.
That I was conserving brain power.
That I focused better under pressure.
And honestly? It worked.
I didn’t miss assignments. I was an A student. And without realizing it, I learned something early and very well: if I waited long enough, adrenaline would take care of the rest.
Fast forward a few decades and the setting has changed, but the pattern hasn’t.
Now it’s decks instead of homework.
Final slides getting polished the morning of a big presentation.
Reworking the opening while my mocha in hand.
Hitting send and immediately switching into “presenter mode.”
And then, because the universe loves reinforcing questionable habits — it goes great.
Peers say the storyline landed. Someone compliments the clarity. Leadership nods along. There’s this quiet little reward that says, See? You work best like this.
And that’s the part no one talks about enough: when procrastination is successful, it doesn’t get questioned. It gets validated.
So the belief hardens.
That pressure equals productivity.
That urgency creates clarity.
That waiting is part of the process.
Except somewhere along the way, I started noticing that I wasn’t really procrastinating, I was waiting for pressure to give me permission.
Permission to act.
Permission to care.
Permission to take something seriously.
And that works great in school.
It works pretty well at work.
It even gets rewarded.
But it does something strange when you apply it to healthcare.
Because healthcare doesn’t hand you deadlines the same way.
There’s no “due by Friday” attached to preventative care. No bolded timeline that says, Now is the moment. Just vague reassurances like we’ll keep an eye on it or call us if anything changes or check back in six months.
Which sounds reasonable. Calm. Responsible.
Until you realize how much that relies on you knowing when “later” has quietly become “too late.”
This week, I kept thinking about how often that pressure-based pattern shows up in the most common, everyday healthcare decisions. Not emergencies, not dramatic diagnoses, just the slow, unglamorous stuff we all mean to get to.
Like the toothache you’ve had for a few weeks.
It’s not terrible. It comes and goes. You chew on the other side. You tell yourself you’ve just been busy. You’ll make the dentist appointment once things slow down.
Except things don’t really slow down, do they?
Or the dermatology appointment you’ve canceled for the third time.
There’s that mole. You’ve noticed it looks a little different. Not alarming, just different enough to register. But the appointment never quite fits into your schedule. Something always feels more urgent. A meeting. A trip. Life.
So you reschedule. Again. And again.
And then there’s the mammogram you were supposed to get last year.
And the year before that.
You know you’re high risk. You know the guidelines. You know better.
But knowing isn’t the problem.
There’s no immediate pressure.
No pain demanding attention.
No crisis forcing your hand.
So your brain does what it was trained to do.
It waits.
It tells you you’re managing your time. That you’re being practical. That you’ll handle it when things calm down; when there’s space, when there’s urgency, when it feels justified.
And the tricky part is that it doesn’t feel irresponsible. It feels reasonable.
I think we underestimate how much healthcare relies on people being able to act without pressure.
Preventative care asks you to show up when nothing is screaming yet.
To take action when the stakes are theoretical.
To trust yourself before fear or pain does the motivating for you.
That’s a skill. And not everyone was taught it.
Some of us were taught to shine under pressure.
To pull it together at the last minute.
To wait until the stakes were undeniable.
So when healthcare asks for early action, quiet vigilance, and self-initiated follow-through, it’s asking us to operate outside the system that made us successful everywhere else.
And then we blame ourselves when we don’t.
We call it procrastination.
We call it irresponsibility.
We tell ourselves we’re “bad patients.”
But I’m starting to think it’s something else.
I think a lot of people are just waiting for permission.
Permission to take something seriously before it becomes urgent.
Permission to make time for care that doesn’t feel dramatic.
Permission to believe that prevention is productive, even when it doesn’t come with immediate payoff.
Because here’s the quiet truth no one really says out loud:
Preventative care doesn’t reward adrenaline.
It rewards consistency.
It doesn’t come with applause.
It comes with normal results and the absence of crisis.
And if you’ve built your identity around performing well under pressure, that can feel strangely unsatisfying, even when it’s exactly what your body needs.
I don’t think this is about being better or more disciplined.
I think it’s about noticing the pattern.
About recognizing when I’ll get to it is really nothing is forcing me yet.
About understanding that waiting doesn’t always mean calm; sometimes it just means habit wearing a nicer outfit.
This week reminded me that healthcare doesn’t always need us at our most heroic.
It needs us earlier than that.
Quieter than that.
Before the deadline appears.
And learning how to show up there, without fear, without urgency, without a crisis, might be one of the hardest and most important things we’re ever asked to do.
