The Almost: The Pattern of the Things You Keep Not Choosing
The Pattern
Notice the things you keep almost doing. The application you filled out and did not send. The conversation you rehearsed and then decided was not quite the right moment. The opportunity you researched, got excited about, and then talked yourself out of with such elegant logic that by the time you finished the argument it genuinely seemed like wisdom. The things you keep almost doing are not evidence of your ambivalence. They are evidence of how much they matter. The scale of the almost is the scale of the caring. Fear does not announce itself as fear. It arrives as practicality, as realism, as the sober assessment of someone who has thought the thing through carefully. The almost keeps the possibility technically open while ensuring it is never actually pursued. That is its function.
Origins & Context
The behavioral pattern of approaching and then avoiding feared stimuli has been extensively documented in the research on experiential avoidance. Steven Hayes and the developers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy identify psychological inflexibility, the tendency to avoid experiences that feel threatening, as the core mechanism underlying most forms of psychological suffering. The almost is a particularly sophisticated version of avoidance because it maintains plausible deniability: you were not afraid, you were thoughtful. The research on procrastination by Timothy Pychyl and Fuschia Sirois has moved away from the common understanding of procrastination as laziness or poor time management and reframed it as emotional regulation: people procrastinate not because they are disorganized but because they are avoiding the negative emotional experience associated with the task, most commonly the fear of failure or the fear of judgment. Pychyl's work shows that the key variable is not time but the emotional charge attached to the action. Carol Dweck's research on mindset adds another layer: people with a fixed mindset, who believe that their abilities are innate and therefore at risk of being definitively assessed, are particularly prone to avoidance because attempting and failing threatens the entire self-concept. The almost preserves the identity of someone who could have, while avoiding the exposure of someone who tried.
The scale of the almost is the scale of the caring. Fear does not announce itself as fear. It arrives as careful thinking.— Nikita Datar
How It Shows Up
The almost shows up as a pattern across time: the same category of thing keeps approaching completion and keeps stopping. It shows up as a collection of half-written documents, half-submitted applications, half-spoken conversations. It shows up as a sophisticated internal narrator who can always produce a reasonable explanation for why now is not quite the right time. The logic of the almost is particularly persuasive because it always contains some truth: the timing could be better, the preparation could be more thorough, the conditions are not ideal. The question is not whether those things are true. The question is whether they are the actual reason. The almost shows up in the gap between what you say you want and what you actually do. In the year you spent saying you were going to write the thing. In the relationship conversation that has been pending for six months. In the resignation letter that exists as a draft. The gap is not evidence of not wanting. It is evidence of wanting something so much that the fear of it not working has become larger than the cost of not trying.
Named in the Literature As
Named in the literature as: Avoidance (Behavioral Activation therapy) -- the behavioral pattern of steering away from feared stimuli through inaction.
Amotivation (Self-Determination Theory) -- the absence of behavioral regulation, associated with low perceived competence and high fear of failure.
Procrastination (Pychyl, Sirois) -- active avoidance of tasks associated with negative emotion, typically fear of failure or judgment.
Related entries: Readiness, Self-Sabotage, The Reflexive Yes, Why I Cannot Finish What I Start.
Nikita's Note
The almost was my primary defense for years and I did not recognize it as a defense because it dressed so well. I was thoughtful. I was deliberate. I was not the kind of person who rushed into things. What I eventually had to confront was the list: all the things I had almost done, mapped across a decade, showing a very clear pattern of approach and retreat around everything that mattered most. The pattern was not random and it was not wisdom. It was fear in a very convincing costume. The specific fear that if I actually tried the thing I cared about most and it did not work, I would have to know something definitive about myself that the almost had been protecting me from knowing. The almost keeps the dream technically alive. The attempting is the only thing that can make it real.
From the work
The scale of the almost is the scale of the caring. Fear does not announce itself as fear. It arrives as careful thinking.From When You're Ready, This Is How You Choose Yourself by Nikita DatarAbout this book
Related Concepts
More in The Pattern Atlas
See all in The Pattern Atlas →I wrote about this in When You're Ready, This Is How You Choose Yourself — available on Amazon.