New Year, New Me?

January is high time for those “new year, new me”, “new years resolution 2018” pledges again. Admit it. At some point in your life you have fallen victim to this vicious cycle where you tell yourself that you are going to do “the thing”, whether it be going to the gym, quitting smoking, starting to save money or eating healthy, you fail to keep up at it for more than 3-4 weeks, 2 months tops. If you are one of the blessed few who don’t, kudos to you. Unfortunately, I suck at it. I fail at doing my new years resolution every single freaking year.

New year’s resolutions are easy to break because almost everyone else fails at doing theirs. Of course we all want to change ourselves for the better. We all know what to do and how to do the thing we which believe will improve our lives.

“Where do I go wrong every year?” “What keeps me from fulfilling my promise?” We ask ourselves. I think I may have just come up with the answer; procrastination.

Of course, this may not apply to everyone else but for me, it definitely does. I am a serial procrastinator. I would delay doing even the simplest of things like doing the laundry, paying my bills, texting my mother, etc. If you can relate, cheers to you!

Procrastination isnt simply being lazy to do what you are supposed to be doing. Everyone has their own reasons.

I would put off cleaning my apartment for the leisure of scrolling through the endless vaccuum of social media. I would delay hitting the gym for joy of watching my favorite tv series. For myself though, I came to a conclusion that I tend to procrastinate to avoid a problem by doing a far more enjoyable activity. Again, if you can relate, cheers to you!

So what can we do to fix this? Are we doomed to procrastinate for the rest of our lives? Fortunately, no. There are a few methods that I have found which can help us minimize this dreadful habit of ours.

Following schedules are hard for procrastinators like us so you would have to bring out the inner obsessive compulsive you for this one. Following a routine can definitely organize your daily activities. It does for me. It can simply be as follows: 8:00 - Wake up; 8:30 - Take a bath; 9:00 am - eat breakfast. Also, a schedule will keep you from conveniently “forgetting” what you are supposed to be doing. There are mobile apps that can make scheduling fairly easier for everyone. Keeping a planner would also be helpful.

We all know that scrolling through Facebook and Instagram takes up a lot of our precious time. Admittedly, dawdling too much on my smartphone is one of the main reasons why I never get anything done most of the time. Who would want to trade laughing at dank memes for cleaning your bathroom, right? But if you really want to change, you have to put that phone down. Difficult, but neccessary.

First, you have to admit that you are actively procrastinating. Then you are going to have to evaluate how you always convince yourself to do something later. For me, the usual excuse that I come up with is that “What a hassle! I can do it later.” Yes we all cancan do it later. But think about it, what’s the harm in doing something rightaway? As the saying goes, the early bird catches the worm.

Focus on the benefits of getting something done early. If you think that you are procrastinating because you find a task troublesome helps, you are just prolonging your agony. You are simply delaying the inevitable. So yeah, just do it ✔️

As Drake and ‘Lil Wayne put it, “you only live once, YOLO that’s the motto.” There is so much to do and so much to learn everyday. My grandfather always used to say that one lifetime isn’t enough for a person. Would you want to live out your remaining days regretting that you haven’t done and experienced enough? Of course not. Get up off your lazy ass and start moving! (That goes for me as well haha). Good luck to us, fellow procrastinators!

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