As with many other chapters the title of this one is deliberately a little provocative and misleading. Misleading in that it looks a lot like one of those silly decorations you find in people's houses. You know the ones - they say stuff like "Mad house" or "Enjoy life, this isn't a rehearsal". Something that's not inherently wrong but comes off as a bit twee and mass market.

In this case "when is later" is not a call to action. It's not a prompt to do today rather than putting off 'till tomorrow.

No. Life is rarely that simple anyway, regardless of what Nike's advertising department might tell you.

Instead let's talk about the concept of "later". It may not translate perfectly into other languages, particularly as language is the framework that constrains much of thought, but at least in English it's sort of vague. It's not quite the hand-waving of the Spanish "mañana" (literally "tomorrow" but in practice more like "in a while").

In English it can mean later today, later this week, later this year, or even just at some indeterminate amount of time. It can even mean "not going to happen but unwilling to say as much", particularly with small children and drunk people.

With all those different options but the same word for all of them it's pretty easy to have a project that is pencilled in for "later" without much of a shape to the later. Lots of the time it's not all that important when it is - just not now. Well, yes, that helps right now but give it a bit of time and the "not now" stops being the important bit of the thought process and the project ends up in the nebulous cloud that is "stuff to work on at some point".

The problem then becomes that these kinds of projects take up space, resources, and depending on how your mind works - headspace. For me the headspace angle is the most important but from what I've learnt that might be a bit more varied between people.

First the practical side - Later projects take up space. Have any of us never told someone else "Oh yeah, that's been left out because I'm going to do it later"?

It's enough of a cliché as to be fodder for comedy - the set of shelves that someone promised their wife they'd put up six years ago, that sort of thing. In the meantime the shelf, drill, etc. lie in a heap next to the wall gathering dust.

In real terms that's more likely to be a case of using a chunk of active project storage space that could be better used by, you know, active projects. The workspace will be inconvenienced by the presence of the Later project as it demands to be worked around. All projects do this but not all projects are Later projects.

For people like me they also take up headspace. I have a swirling mass of "things I'm going to do" that fills my mind and makes it difficult to think straight. It's not the only element that contributes to that but it's certainly a factor.

We should probably get to the way I deal with this now, shouldn't we?

Okay - so for me this becomes a case of looking at each project and asking myself "When is later?" it doesn't need to be exact, just a vague estimate. Some projects I've planned for in fifteen to twenty years time - perhaps I won't get to do them but I definitely don't see such an ambitious build happening now.

Others are more immediate - ideally tomorrow but subject to juggling based on other factors in life (e.g. sharpening the kitchen knives).

Between those two extremes lie the various other things. Sometimes the determining factor is looking at how long similar projects have taken me, other times it's based on my enthusiasm for them.

Once I have a rough idea of what shape the later is I then use that to make decisions about storage and spending (if I don't have all the parts right now and the later is in months time then why spend the money now to just store the parts upon arrival).

Instead of trying to share my workspace between short Laters and long Laters I'll prioritise the ones I'm reasonably likely to make progress on.

I joked earlier about lying to small children and drunk people with regards to whether something was going to happen or not. That actually applies to yourself too. Are you realistically going to do this project? Is that something you can see happening?

It's important to ask because later might be a coping mechanism. Sometimes it's easier to put something in the later category rather than admitting that it's unlikely to happen.

I'm not going to ask you to give those up - you need to make those decisions for yourself when you're ready. However maybe consider sticking them in the long term later column if you can bring yourself to do so.

Perhaps now is a good time for a practical example of this. A few times per year we go through our various workspaces around the house and discuss when we're going to do things and what we have planned.

Our vague conception of how much time we have to do things is always in conflict with the more concrete element that is day to day life. It might be nice to spend the evening doing some sewing but we've got a guest coming tomorrow and the house needs resetting and probably some cleaning. The chores and so forth may not be directly budgeted for, much like the nebulous later.

I don't have a direct solution to that as linear time is one of my weak points. However I can triage and be realistic as to how much time there is overall. It sounds odd to say but spend some time around me and it'd make sense!

Anyway the upshot is that the sewing machine doesn't get to stay deployed. The sewing it's going to be used for is later but the shape of that later is more like later in the week, not a few hours. Having it monopolise space that is better used for the tidying we're about to do (and the resultant triage of the piles of stuff we'll be gathering) isn't the best use of the space. However its later is only a few days - it's not going to be moved into storage on the other side of town. Retrieving things from there takes much of an hour, time that would be better enjoyed sewing!

One of Jenny's Laters is writing. She enjoys it a great deal but simply doesn't have time. Not because she's busy running the household but because there's so many other things she also wants to work on. Whether it's her podcasts, her cardmaking, or her sewing - all of these things take time. There's simply not enough time to do all of them.

It pained her to admit it but writing is just going to have to wait. I hope it won't have to wait too long but in the meantime her various writing books and resources have been put into storage. As I said earlier, it's not tremendously onerous to retrieve them, but it's unlikely that she'll want them at an hour's notice.

Similarly I have some moulds I need to make for some friends - later. It's not going to be this week and probably won't be this month. As a result I've decided to not keep the details of that in the forefront of my mind, other than when writing about them. It's not that I don't have time but more that it's quite involved and I'd really need to commit to spending time making them happen. Right now I've got a bit too much else in my head to make that feasible. Rather than try to tell myself it'll be sooner than that I'm not. There's no point - it'll be at least a month, probably months. If I get them all done by the end of the year I'll be happy.

There's also one last thing to mention about this stuff - by putting a shape to the later of projects it's easier to make plans for how to treat them. A long term Later should probably have some notes made for it and be packed away neatly with its various resources. A short term Later can be allowed freeform chaos, up to a point. Medium Laters will be the hardest to deal with as there's much more variance there. For those you'll need to devise your own brackets, I should think. I could suggest some but they're based on my life and work, not yours. The patterns are probably there though - if you start looking for them.

Hopefully this makes sense. It's partly advice related to cognitive load, partly to do with storage requirements, and a bit to do with project management.