Write down everything that's wrong right now.
All of it. The gate that won't shut. The invoice a client hasn't paid. The tooth. The credit card. The conversation with your boss you keep rehearsing in the car. The garage you can't park in. The course you keep meaning to do.
Go on. Actually write it.
Most men get to fifteen or twenty before they slow down. Some get to forty.
Now look at the order you wrote them in.
The order is almost never by cost. It's by noise. The gate comes first because it was there this morning. The tooth comes ninth because it only hurts on the left.
That's how most lists get run. Loudest first.
It's why the same problems are still there a year later. Bigger. Uglier. More expensive. While the gate swings beautifully.
Because problems aren't all the same kind of thing.
Some of them are a flat fee. They cost what they cost, this month and every month, until they get dealt with. The gate is a flat fee.
Some of them charge interest. They get worse the longer you wait. Every month they're left, they cost more to fix than they did the month before. And while the gate is getting its hinge, they're quietly spawning new problems of their own.
The tooth is charging interest.
That's the cost of avoidance. Not the tooth. The waiting.
Both have been sitting on one list. Sorted by volume.
A flat-fee problem waits for you. An interest-bearing problem does not.
THE ONLY QUESTION THAT SORTS THEM
Ask one thing of everything on the list.
Will this cost more next month than it costs now?
That's it. That's the whole test. It's the only one that sorts which problems to solve first.
Not more painful. More expensive. In money. In hours. In options. In the number of other problems it will have produced by then.
If the answer is no, it's a flat fee. The broken gate. The dull commute. The garage full of boxes. The colleague who talks too much. The old car that still runs. The invoice from a client who is slow but always pays. None of these are getting worse. They cost the same in October as they did in March. You can schedule them. You should schedule them. That's what schedules are for.
If the answer is yes, it's charging interest. And it pays to understand what that means, because interest-bearing problems share three habits.
They're quiet. The gate rattles every time the wind gets up. The crack in the molar does nothing at all until the afternoon it splits. Interest-bearing problems almost never announce themselves. That's why they lose the noise contest. Every single time.
They compound. The card balance grows on its own. The gap between what the field expects and what's actually on the CV widens every month it isn't closed. The dispute left unanswered has a lawyer on the other side of it now. One problem in January. Three problems by June. And the three are harder than the one ever was.
They get more expensive to fix. Not just bigger. More expensive. A filling costs $200. A root canal costs $1,500. An extraction and an implant costs $5,000. Same tooth. Same mouth. The only thing that changed was the date.
Run the question over the list tonight. Two piles.
The first time through, brace yourself. The pile charging interest is nearly always the shorter one. And it nearly always holds the two or three things that are hardest to look at.
That's not a coincidence.
THE PROBLEMS THAT COMPOUND ARE THE ONES BEING AVOIDED. THE AVOIDANCE IS THE INTEREST.
This content is only available to subscribers
Subscribe now and have access to all our stories, enjoy exclusive content and stay up to date with constant updates.
Unlock contentAlready have an account? Sign In
