Wellness Wednesday – 3 tips for beating procrastination

Cadillac, Mercedes, Jaguar and the NutriBullet Rx. What do these items have in common? The first three are top of the line, elegant cars. The fourth item is a top of the line “blender/juicer.” All of these items come with an owner’s manual.

My sleek blender and all its parts were packaged neatly in box with cardboard dividers to protect its fragile parts. It was a Christmas gift that I received to help me with healthy meal preparation. Although I was excited about this gift, it was a month before I opened it.

The box was shifted from under my Christmas tree to a new location in the kitchen pantry. I kept making excuses for not opening the box. I needed to buy fruit, needed to reorganize an area to store the juicer, and so on.

When I finally opened the box, it was like Christmas all over again. I had the gleam in my eye of a kid with a new toy. Until…I discovered all of the reading material. There were warranty papers and a 30 page recipe book (that I call the owner’s manual). My first thought was, do I have to read all of this before I can play?

I closed the box and put it back in the pantry for later, when I could spend more time reviewing recipes and make a grocery list. Procrastination had gotten the best of me once again. Don’t let procrastination keep you from starting or continuing your journey to health and wellness.

Here are 3 tips to beat procrastination.

1.      Jump right in – just get started

2.      Look at time – sometimes we have a poor concept of the amount of time a task will take. Decide on an amount of time you want to spend on a task and break the task into small amounts of time if necessary.

3.      Have a procrastination song power song (from forbes.com) – find a song that energizes and pumps you up. Play it whenever you want to tackle something you’ve been procrastinating.

BONUS

4.      Celebrate the completion of your task – motivate yourself by creating a reward for the completion of your task.

What is one thing that you want to accomplish on your health and wellness journey?

“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a simple step.” Lao Tzu

Muffins with Mom – What happens when a teen procrastinates?

Don't put off until tomorrow, what you can do today

I think I was a teen once upon a time, but I don’t remember procrastinating to the extent that my son does. So, what happens when a teen procrastinates? The situation escalates.

I’ve been known to procrastinate a time or two…or three, but there comes a time when you learn a lesson. Perhaps my son learned a thing or two recently. It all began on a clear winter’s day – trash day.

My son knows it’s his responsibility to bring the empty trash can from the curb, back into the garage on trash day. After all, he walks right near it when he gets off the bus after school.

On this particular trash day, my son took the trash can onto the front porch and left it there instead of taking it all the way to the garage. His explanation was, “my hands were full I had to check the mail too.” The can stayed there another day.

As Mother Nature would have it, a winter blizzard blew our way and the trash can went missing. Wind gusts and four or five inches of snow left our area covered with a blanket of snow. The next day, I opened the vertical blinds that provided a view into our backyard and that is when I discovered the missing trash can.

Of course, my son still needed to complete his task of retrieving the trash can and returning it to its proper location. Only now he had to get through a foot of snow to complete the mission. And his boot were not tall enough to keep the snow out and his feet dry. So what does he do?

Grabbing the first pair of tall boots he saw, my son stuffed his feet in, threw his hood over his head and trekked across the yard. With the first step he took, his toes curled like claws into the cloth of the boot.

“These boot are too tight,” he yelled to me as he dashed onto the deep snow.

My son tried to run with the quickness of a Ninja, to avoid sinking into the crunchy snow. His strategy was to tip toe run and toss the trash can ahead of him so there was no extra weight. The strategy worked, but he looked silly doing it. That is what happens when a teen procrastinates.

And I recorded the end result of my sons procrastination.

Have you ever come across a teen who procrastinates? What advice would you give to a procrastinator?