You have a week left in the month. Seven days can go by so fast. Why not add a little time to your project? Five minutes can be enough. If you did something five minutes longer each day this week, you would have worked a half-hour more on the project. Five minutes doesn’t sound like much, because it isn’t, but a half-hour is substantial.

Your little extra doesn’t have to be time. Perhaps you are writing a book or short story. Why not add one hundred more words than you scheduled? Or if you are scrapbooking, like I am, you can do one more page than you had planned.

You won’t notice the five minutes passing at the time, but you’ll be pleased with what you got done this week.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” William Penn

Two weeks an ideal length of time. It’s long enough to complete a goal, but short enough to keep your momentum going.

Why not pick a goal or project that you can finish in two weeks, and get started today. Break it into fourteen chunks and put it on your daily calendar. You’ll leap for joy on leap day when you reach your goal.

My 2018 scrapbook has been sitting in Shutterfly, unfinished, for a while now. It is fifty pages long, so if I journal and decorate four pages a day, I’ll be done by February 29th. I got behind on my scrapbooking, so it will feel good to get one done. Then I can use those 50% coupons Shutterfly keeps sending me.

Good luck with your project. Setting deadlines for goals is a great way to beat procrastination, something most of us need to conquer.

Actually, I’m about even in this war. I’ve won some, and procrastination has won some. I think I lose because the jobs seem too big. For example, I want to declutter my house. That is a big job, so I tend to procrastinate, which drives me crazy. I know I want an organized house.

Yesterday, I found a ray of help. I read a meme on a Facebook decluttering page that said, “Drop everything and declutter something for five minutes.”

Since I am an obliger, I stopped what I was doing and cleaned out a bathroom drawer. Thanks to the mice, there a lot of items that were now trash. In five minutes, I had a clean drawer, and my unopened soap was now stored in a Tupperware container.

I’d say hooray for me, but I’d wanted to work on that drawer for a couple of weeks. It took five minutes once I finally did it. Two weeks of thinking about it vs. five minutes of getting it done. I guess procrastination won that round.

How are you doing on your goals for 2020? Like me, you might not be having blazing success, but it’s only January. If we improve a little each month, we’ll be procrastination-busting, goal-reaching winners by December. The trick is to never give up.

I’ll keep fighting, and I hope you will too. It’s worth it.

Every year I pick a theme and then make a goal list based on that theme. In the past, I’ve worked on finishing projects, old projects, and new projects. This year I’m working on projects that I have been procrastinating on.

That’s right. The theme for 2020 is procrastination.

I have written this blog for over three years and never missed a day. I’m going to run/walk every day in 2020. It might seem like I don’t procrastinate, but the truth is, I’m a master procrastinator, and it drives me crazy. Why is it I never forget to write my blog, but I can’t edit my stories? It makes no sense, and in 2020, I’m going to overcome procrastination.

“Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we’re thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don’t show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin’, no matter what.”

Steven Pressfield

One thing that I know about myself is that I’m an obliger (otherwise known as a people-pleaser.) I write this blog because people email me when they don’t get it. I edit other people’s stories because it helps them succeed. But if I have to do something for myself, I probably put it off.

“I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.”

Susan Orlean

I need to find accountability buddies or websites that demand accountability. I won’t break my running streak because I won’t get the badge on Smashrun if I do. I need external deadlines for my writing and other goals.

Do you have a theme for 2020? I find having a theme keeps me focused on my goals. Why not try it out and see if it helps you reach your new year goals.

“Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.”

Napoleon Hill

It’s not that old, so I thought that a computer guru could clean it and get get my speed back. However, I was reluctant to give it up for however long it would take. Plus, what if something went wrong? I use my computer for too many projects to take the chance of it being ruined.

And then, last Friday, my power button broke, and I couldn’t turn on my computer. I found a local place to take my laptop, and the guy there seemed to know his stuff.

The part that broke needed to be ordered. Since my computer broke on a Friday and Monday was a holiday, the part wasn’t going to arrive for several days. I had no choice but to use an older laptop for a while.

However, there’s always a silver lining. The computer guy could turn my computer on from inside the unit, so I asked him to clean my computer since he was going to have it for so long. It was the perfect opportunity to get some speed back.

I picked it up on Thursday afternoon, and it’s like new. The power button no longer feels like it will break if I touch it, and the overall performance is much better. Obviously, I could have saved myself some frustration if I had done a wellness check months ago, but like going to the doctor, it’s easy to postpone things even if they make us feel better.

Maybe you can learn something from my story and get something fixed that you’ve been putting up with. Or just wait for it to break, like I did, and then look for the silver lining.