As many of you know, I’m a procrastinator at heart. I’m aiming to get better about this. Some weeks ARE better and some weeks I wish I could be a little more self motivated! Below are the tasks that I tend to procrastinate the most often on, in no particular order:
- Leaving the House – I don’t know why, but I always give myself about 5-10 minutes less than I need to get out the door. I tend to think that I can move faster than I normally can and I tend to be late. I have to be extremely intentional and give myself about 20 minutes to get to my destination in order to be on time.
- Laundry – Sometimes it gets old doing laundry so often. I do have plenty of helpers though, so there’s really no excuse for me to get behind on the laundry.
- Paying the Bills – It’s a chore that is no fun. Who wants watch your money go away? LOL. I know, it’s a lot better than the late fees and bad credit we’d be getting if I didn’t pay them, so I don’t wait too long…..but…I do wait until the last possible moment. That reminds me…..I need to pay bills!
- Changing the Oil – We change the oil on our car every 3000 miles. There’s something about going to the oil changing place and waiting for it to get done makes me procrastinate getting it done. So maybe, I SHOULD say that we desire to change it every 3000 miles, but we’re happy if I get it done by 4,000.
- Bible Reading – I’m really good at putting this off. I’m working on doing better at doing this daily and I’m going to invite you to do the same with me. Details at the end of the post.
- Making Dinner – When I plan to start the crockpot, I tend to remember at 3:00 p.m. Um, too late! So then I decide I’ll just wait and make dinner the “old fashioned” way and then remember about 6:30 or 7:00 that I should get started. Thankfully this is not always the case, but….many days, I’m scrambling trying to figure out what’s for dinner.
- Cleaning Put the Van – We have a habit of hopping out of the van and not loading our arms full. And how in the world do we alway have more things in there than 8 sets of arms can carry anyway?
- Cleaning the House – I will do anything I can to not clean the house, BUT I have gotten to the point where I can’t stand it too messy for too long. What I consider messy and what you consider messy are probably very different though.
- Writing a Blog Post – I tend to think I can’t write until the house is quiet. Um….when is that? 🙂 I’m working through some different suggestions to help me to get it done earlier, one of which included using sound proof ear phones (thanks to my friend April’s suggestion). I’m not sure if that would drive me crazy though, wearing something so big on my head, but I may try it when I’m desperate enough! For the record, I wrote this whole post while the house was wide awake and still talking. Focus, Sarah. Focus!
- Exercise – I don’t really want to do it in front of my gawking children, but I’m getting better. If they gawk too long, I make them join me. 😉 I’m in the middle of this Shaklee 180 weight loss program and a big part of that is exercising. I did well with losing weight my first month and now I need to step it up a bit and get regular exercise as often as possible.
Now for the action plan!!
I’m not going to tackle all of these at once, but this week (and the weeks to come), I’m going to tackle my Bible reading (once again). I aim to post the verse that sticks out to me each day on my Facebook wall. Maybe you will post yours under mine? I’d love to hear about what God is teaching you!
For cleaning the house, I’ve also used my new Stop Procrastinating group. You’re welcome to request an invitation if you’d like to do that, too! As a group, we work on cleaning our homes and telling each other about how we did. We aim to keep our homes as clean as possible and support one another in the process. It’s actually kind of fun!