In every project, in every problem space, you’ll eventually ask — or be asked:
What are you going to do right now? What are you going to do later?
And how do you decide?
This is where a lot of people get stuck. Myself included, sometimes.
The stakes
One of the techniques I use to make decisions quickly is raise the stakes.
I imagine a scenario where I have to bet on one of the decisions laid out in front of me. My entire life savings. On one thing. And one thing only.
I’ve got one minute to pick.
What would it be... Champ?
(Intense, I know. But everyone has their own version. The classic “gun to the head” scenario. Whatever works.)
Because when you raise the stakes like that — you cut through the noise. You stop pretending you can do everything. You start feeling what actually matters.
Eventually, it becomes second nature. Instinct. You don’t need the cinematic drama anymore. You just know what feels most likely to move the work forward.
But that still leaves one big question:
What happens to all the stuff you didn’t choose?
What happens to "The Later"?
The Later
That space — the stuff you don’t do yet — That’s "The Later".
A familiar friend. A shadowy space, someplace out there, where a lot of the anxiety lives.
What about this thing? Have you considered this scenario? What makes it different this time? What if this decision is suboptimal — and prevents us from scaling the system later? Don’t you care about the details? Don’t you care about this group, or that group? Don’t you care about making things better?
(Don’t you care?)
And on and on it goes.
Backseat drivers. Well-meaning worriers. Shouting from their protected positions on the sidelines. A chorus of questions that sidewind between curiosity and judgment.
Managing The Later is actually the hard part.
The dead-ends
In an ideal situation, the thing you’ve chosen — the one of many you decided to focus on, "The Now" — ends up resolving several things that were stuck in The Later.
That moment of clarity. That inner “O.M.G.” feeling. That fanfare met with virtual high-fives and fire emojis.
We call that a breakthrough.
Sometimes, it’s the opposite. You hit a wall. A dead-end. Crap.
More questions surface. Anxiety spikes. You — and others — start to wonder: Was "The Now" the right choice? Did we mess this up? Do we even know what we’re doing?
When I hit those (unfortunately familiar) outcomes, I return to my Overworld map.
I mark the dead-end.
Then I ask:
Given everything we know now… Everything we’ve encountered… Given where we’re trying to go…
What’s the most likely path? What are the shots we want to take? What can we push to The Later — so we can keep moving?
So we can keep trying. So we can choose again. To choose better.
The job
Much of managing The Later happened during Webflow's AI Site Builder.
What about alternative color rendering? Later. What about typography pairings? Later. What about matching brand colors with imagery? Later. What about evals? Wait. How do you know if you’re doing it right without intensely engineered evals?! Later.
We heard these questions. We asked them too. But when you’re in it — when you’ve got 10 people building, 20 things breaking, and 50 more waiting in line — you have to decide:
What moves us forward now? Right now.
From the outside, or even during the project, that kind of triage might look reckless. Or careless. Or short-sighted.
And sure — maybe it is. But I don’t see it that way. I see it as... reality.
For those of us in the thick of it all. It’s survival. That’s the cost of doing anything that’s never been done before: you can’t plan it perfectly.
Given all the pieces in play, what are the best moves we can make right now? Anything and everything else. Later.
Now... Do you take three weeks to plan every single task for the quarter?
Heck no.
If we had a plan for our plan after many meetings for our meetings where we knew exactly what was going to happen and what we were going to do, I doubt that we'd be in this mess. But we don't. So here we are.
In this kind of work, the best you can do is stay a few steps ahead — flashlight in hand, shining just enough light for others to follow.
You’re not pretending to see the whole map. You’re not hiding the fog. You’re just helping people move through it with a little more confidence.
And that?
That’s the job. A beacon in the fog.
The Fog
The Fog. Another familiar friend.
What is this fog, if not all the manifested anxieties that swirl inside The Later?
The edge cases. The things you didn’t plan for. The doubts you couldn’t shake. The uncomfortable truths you didn’t want to confront yet.
As you keep moving forward, The Later eventually becomes The Now, as natural as tomorrow becoming today.
That decision you deferred four weeks ago? (Ding dong. It's heeeere!)
And now you have to face it.
You knew it was coming. Sooner or later.
The difference is — this time — you’re not guessing in the dark.
You’ve walked through the problem. You’ve seen its edges. You’ve hit some dead-ends. You’ve gathered signals (some anyway). You’ve earned perspective.
You’re not arriving at the moment empty-handed — you’ve got experience. Not perfect knowledge, but just enough to act with more clarity, more precision, and slightly more confidence.
But here’s the catch:
It might not feel any less scary. In fact, it might feel heavier.
Because now, the fear of the unknown has been replaced by something else: The dread of knowing all the labourious, no-fun work you’re going to have to do to make it work.
It’s still hard. Daunting. But it’s a better problem to have.
You don’t have to brace for the unknown. You just have to brace for impact.
The kind of impact that shatters the daydream of “what if we only did this…” and instead hands you a wrench and a broom and says:
Get to work.
The decision point
That’s the thing about The Now and The Later — it’s not a one-time split. It’s a rhythm. A cycle. A dance.
Every day, every project, every next step brings you back to the same question:
What are you going to do now? What are you going to do later?
The two partners you’ll never stop trying to balance. The two ghosts that whisper at every decision you make.
You won’t always get it right. You can’t.
But you can get better at choosing.
You can raise the stakes when you’re stuck. You can map the dead-ends when things go wrong. You can light the way for others, even if you’re just a few steps ahead.
And when (ding dong) The Later inevitably shows up.
You’ll (hopefully) be guessing less — and be a bit more ready.
There’s always going to be a Later. But what you do Now? That’s the part only you can decide.