“How soon “not now” become “never”.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Have you ever sat their procrastinating in front of youtube for 2-3 hours or in front of the TV, and then felt like crap? I sure have. And I hate myself every time I do it. When you feel efficient, you feel great. When you procrastinate, you feel like crap. If you are one of those that procrastinate, keep reading. It’s time to prevent procrastination.

I’m sure there are amazing things that you want to do in life. Many of which you put off and think that “someday” you will achieve them. This can include things such as:

–          Ie. Learning to play the piano, reading a book you’ve been wanting to read, going on a short diet etc.

Someday doesn’t happen unless you put a DEFINITIVE time frame on it. Would you buy a product from someone, if they said they will deliver it to you someday? Didn’t think so. You need to set a realistic time frame.

My friend Lisa stumbled across a TED talk that encourages taking proactive actions over a 30 day period. I felt this was an amazing exercise. Psychologically, if we as humans don’t feel like we are always progressing in life, we feel we are wasting our life. We then feel depressed, demotivated and unhappy. At the extreme end, people can get things like illnesses and mid-life crisis situations.

Many people think that life is about finding a stable job. So they set out to do that. They work a few years, then come to the self-realization that it wasn’t what they wanted in a career. If you are pursuing a job solely because you think it’s where the money’s at, you’re doomed. The key is to align your goals in life with your career aspirations.

If you want an exercise to find what you enjoy, make sure to check out my post from a few days ago and complete that exercise. But that’s not the emphasis of this post.

My goal with today’s post is to emphasize the importance of taking action of something you’ve identified as something you want to accomplish in life. Once you have identified something you enjoy, do the following exercise:

Trying something new for 30 days

–          30 days seems to be a good number of days to form good habits, and to break bad ones

–          The next thirty days will pass regardless of whether you like it or not, so you can either drown in mediocrity and stand still, or do something you’ve always enjoyed, but kept putting off. And trust me, you’ll be proud of yourself when you follow through

–          The key is small changes each day, thus making the exercise much more sustainable

Make sure you write down your 30 day commitment, and read it every morning. Otherwise, you will not follow through.

You can watch the short video here: