I was reading an interesting article at Lesson In Life where Banji talks about how he motivates himself to do things like spring cleaning. It got me thinking about how I manage the tasks in my life.

I’m NOT a housekeeper. Cleaning house, doing laundry, washing dishes are all things that I despise doing. I feel like they are time wasters that suck up all the minutes I would much prefer spending doing other things like reading, writing my blogs or messing around with the dogs and/or birds. Those things all have a much higher rank in my life, but I still want clean clothes and dishes and a dust-free house, so in order to have all of those things I have to manage and balance it all out somehow especially since I can’t afford a housekeeper :/ .

Banji gives some excellent advice on motivating yourself to do those not-so-pleasant tasks and I’m going to have to try to make use of his tips as I face those grindingly boring chores.

He makes the point that I’ve already learned — do the most hated things first and get them out of the way. I guess I hate laundry the most, so when laundry day dawns, the first thing I do is sort it and get that first load in the washer. I’ve also learned to make myself fold the clean, dry laundry as I take it out of the dryer — that makes it easier (somehow — I know it’s psychological on my part) to get it put away and move on to the next load or chore.

I used to be a terrible procrastinator. Things that I didn’t like to do, I put off and put off until either the time to do them was so limited that it was do it or get fired or the need for the insert-chore-name-here became redundant. Rushing through a project is not always good. While some people claim they produce their best work with a tight deadline, I find that the opportunity for errors is greatly increased by that pressure even on those who supposedly perform well under it.

Procrastination is almost as addictive as cigarettes or alcohol can be and like both addictions, is debilitating and really hard to change. You start blaming everything and everybody else for your lack of performance. It affects everything in your life from work to marriage to self image. So, finding “tricks” to get you out of that death spiral can literally make or break you.

If you’ve ever been a procrastinator, you will find that it’s only too easy to slip back into those bad habits. I fight myself all the time over finding excuses not to do something I KNOW needs to be done. Some things I even know are beneficial and part of me still tries to find ways of getting out of doing them — like exercising.

I joined a gym and promised myself to go 3x per week. I did go 3x per week for the first month, but the last couple of weeks, I’ve found one excuse or another to not go but once a week and that’s not going to get me reaching my goal of a fitter me anytime soon! It’s not that I hate exercising, either! I’ve found that I actually like doing the machines and working out. I have promised myself that I will get back on track starting this week.

Do you have any tips for me to get me motivated to stay on track with my exercise program?

Is it easy for you to do mundane tasks or do you, like me, resent the time necessary to get them done?

Which is the stronger in your life; Procrastination or Motivation?

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