“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.” -Don Marquis

Well, with that quote Don Marquis certainly hit the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned. But that was a short time ago when I was considered the king of procrastinators. I’m a changed guy now, but I’ll tell you something: read how I changed, and maybe that could be of some help to procrastinators everywhere.

Before I start ratting out my lazy life, let me first describe procrastination: Procrastination is the habit of doing something today that should have been done the day before yesterday. Yes, simply speaking, procrastination is the art of keeping putting things off. Now, let’s move on to my story:

Once upon a time, specifically three months ago, my routine was something like this: lounging on the couch drinking cups of coffee instead of attending my daily bathroom rituals; bunking exercise, thinking I’d catch it up tomorrow; delay the issuance of checks that required immediate attention; wasting time on the couch and staying up late at night watching TV instead of catching up on sleep; pushing important tasks like filing my tax returns to the latest date, and so on.

The consequences added up and my slip-ups started showing up: my colleagues lost respect for me because I was tired during work hours; my children began to treat me as part of a piece of furniture; My friends started avoiding me because I hadn’t bothered to catch up with them for the old days, and every time I looked into my wife’s eyes, I could read “get fit or get out” loud and clear. The only boy who loved me was Bud, our dog, but that wasn’t enough.

From a fun loving human being, procrastination turned me into a lazy dog ​​and from a lazy dog ​​it was turning me into a lazy pig. I had to do something to get rid of my procrastination and regain my self-confidence. I knew that my path to salvation lay in my self-determination, but I needed help. I took my trust in my wife and bared my soul, and from there my journey of redemption began: my wife would now be my guide and mentor and help me stop procrastinating.

When I look back, I realize that getting rid of procrastination is not as difficult as it seems. These are some of the measures I resorted to, and this is what I did:

1. First of all, I had to put my mind together. If he had to do it, he had to do it now. This became a kind of chant and although I started slowly, I started immediately attending to the important tasks and gradually got a hold of myself.

2. I started to think positively. I threw out all the negative feelings I had about my boss, my friends, my colleagues and even my wife and painted them all the color of sunlight and my whole thought process changed for the better. The cobwebs in my mind cleared away and I began to look at people and things from a new perspective.

3. Thinking positive gradually pushed away all the self-defeating thoughts that used to lurk in my mind. “I can’t” became “I can”, “I shouldn’t” became “I will”, and things started to change because I started getting initial positive feedback from my family members.

4. Gradually, I began to plan tasks and also began to enjoy the process! Granted, my wife was around to tease me, and my kids were looking at her dad in a new light, and that somehow gave me the strength to continue my push against procrastination.

5. Okay, I’ll be lying if I say the transformation was magical, because it wasn’t. To begin with, I had to break important tasks into small doable parts and then attend to them. But, over time, I found that it could handle monstrous tasks in the blink of an eye.

6. Well, I tried a little meditation and found that it had a calming influence on me. Trust me, a calming influence can give you the inner strength to do your job without anyone’s help or interference.

This is the gist of how I went about breaking my procrastination. Today the sun shines brightly on me as I deserve the respect of my colleagues and friends and the love of my family.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to plan next month’s budget and help my lovely daughter with her school project. I started my story with a quote and now I’ll end it with one:

“Someday is not a day of the week.” – Unknown author

Good luck!