Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.
Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
agnus ci
We are on I-95 northbound to my parents in Maryland. Left 6 hrs later than planned (of course! lol) No way to really make up time so my MITs for today are all about character building: Be patient. Accept what is. Be courteous.
In about 1 hr we will need to decide whether to keep our hotel reservation (arriving about midnight), or rebook wherever we will be around 6-9pm. I've been thinking about sanity in my life and wondering what it would look like! This may be an opportunity to try doing it differently.
ag - 1 small step for sanity
we have stopped for the night, enjoying a relaxing dinner. yay God!
have a safe and sane trip Ag!
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
to wash or not to wash, that is the question...
I need to do laundry - pretty badly, too - but I fooled around all day, and now it's raining. The laundromat is a walk from my apartment. It's pain to get there when it's raining, and even worse to get back without getting my clean clothes all splashed and muddy. I don't know what do.
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Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
a compromise
I didn't go to the laundromat because of the rain, which is kind of a bad thing - I have hardly any clean clothes. On the plus side, I'm doing the handwashing that had piled up. I'm thinking of also washing the bathroom floor.
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Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
Journey 2 pm
Groceries have been bought, lunch has been eaten. Now to put the groceries away, throw bread in bread machine, straighten and dust my bedroom, maybe vacuum maybe not, bathe the dog and clean the bathroom after that venture. And while that's going on, do some laundry, dishes, and make dinner.
Like Whiteduck I need to prepare my clothes for work and gym!
10 min break (setting timer), then tackle groceries and fold one load of laundry.
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
Journey 2 pm
I really like the timer idea! It gives you permission to sidetrack a little but puts you back on task. I've been kinda sorta following FlyLady for awhile, and she uses the timer to start working on tasks, but i think it might be more effective as a limited reward mechanism.
Sausage - done
1st load of laundry for next week - done
Fajita meat marinating - done
Thank you for the welcome - I'm hopeful this approach will work where SO many time management/self-help books haven't.
re: timer to whiteduck
The timer is an excellent tool - I should use it more often! most times, I sit down to play a computer game, thinking I'll play 10 minutes, and next thing you know, an hour has gone by.
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
Lark @ 12:08pm (feeling guilty over a project)
Hi everyone. I haven't been here too often lately, as I've been an active participant in "real life" lately. I hired a parttime helper, and also a friend who does similar work and I have been working together. Still, housework and general house and lawn stuff has been suffering. A client owes me a goodly chunk of needed money, but I've been procrastinating ALOT on billing him. I put his stuff off for so long before starting that I feel guilty now, and I want to do really well to show him. Nevertheless, I'm gonna need the payment within a week or so. Does anyone else feel this after a lengthy procrastinating binge and start up? I'd REALLY appreciate anyone's thoughts and support.
Today:
(X)morning routine
(X)spiritual time
(X)wash dirty sofa cushion (Now it's the CLEAN one!)
Do some laundry
mow grass (highest part)
Do one section of work project A
Finish yesterday's section of project B (only)
Put cleaning stuff on tomorrow's first project
check in later
ag relates to lark
You are not alone, Lark! I have a client I have not billed yet for work done in February. Apparently I am so embarrassed that I prefer to write it off than to bill it now. I identify this as the insanity mentioned in Step 2. For me, sanity wuld be billing on time all the time so I can have regular income. But I have NO confidence in myself to do this consistently. I have asked my Higher Power for help and recently sent bills for Mar to another client, and caught up through June for yet another (because their CFO is sorta mean!). And I completd the work for billing others thru June, but still apr-june are not mailed. A friend recommended a business-financial coach he uses and she sounds awesome - but still I balk at paying for what I "should" be able to do alone.
Sorry I don't have much solution to this yet to share with you, but you sure aren't alone.
re:Lark feeling guilty
Lark, I don't do the kind of work you do, but yes, if I'm behind on something I feel really guilty about asking other people to do their rightful part of the work. Because I know I really hate it when my boss waits til the last minute to get something done and we have to drop everything and do his work for him. So I don't want to do that to other people.
But, even if I'm not behind or procrastinating I hate asking people to do stuff. I always think I should be able to do everything by myself without help. The longer I'm in this 12 step program though, the more I realize that I can't do anything alone.
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
New - first check in
Hello, my name is Whiteduck and I am a procrastinator.
Today I would like to prepare my clothes for both work and gym for the coming week;
Make sausages so that I don't have to freeze the ground pork;
Make fajitas tonight (a production, since I make the tortillas instead of buying them);
and sit down and do a "mind dump" of all the stuff I have going on at work so I can focus on what needs to be done rather than what just happens to be in front of me at the moment.
None of which seems very daunting, but I can't count the times I've started the week by pulling stuff randomly out of the closet because I didn't "have time" to plan for the week first. :rolleyes:
Welcome Whiteduck
Sounds like you expect a lot of yourself - making homemade sausage - making homemade tortillas - although that stuff sounds really, really tasty and I'd love it if someone did that in my house (besides me, of course lol).
Glad you are with us, and you will get a lot of support here!
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
Bashofan Check-in 1
Ok, just ate breakfast and finshed cleaning kitchen. I'm going to take a shower now, then fold and put away a load of clothes. I'll do the whites tonight. I want to get to the office by 10:30. I'd like to think that I'm too stressed out about project to procrastinate today, but we'll see. So far, so good.
Journey 9 am
Got up at a reasonable time this morning; had coffee and finished the last chapter of my overdue library book.
Today I want to finish cleaning the house, buy groceries, bathe the dog, review some stuff for work, and make a new workout mix for my mp3 player.
I can't decide if I want to get groceries first or bathe the dog first. Well, I can sit here and wallow in indecision until the situation decides itself, or I can pick one and get moving.
Hmm . . I think I'll sit here and wallow in indecision for a few hours while I play computer games, then I'll have to rush to the grocery store before dinner. But NO! That was the pre-PA me!
Instead, I'll check the grocery ads online and see what's on sale.
Later . . . Have a great Sunday all!
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
Journey 10:30
Grocery list made. Gonna medicate the dog, put her collar on, then head to the store while the good people are in church!
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
GS Check In 7 AM
Good morning, all...
Sunday. The papers are on the porch (we get 4! egads!)... Younger son watching TV, I'm about to fix him breakfast, then throw him in the shower... :-)
The immediate MIT this AM will be to vacuum before church. Esp. the upholstery in the LR. (The cat is shedding like crazy this summer.)
Beyond that the day will largely program itself. Church, then Mrs. GS and I take son to camp. We've made an appt. to use the time driving back home (about 90+ minutes) to continue a very good discussion we started the other night about $$$ matters.
We'll visit her dad after we return. (That was another agenda item yesterday, but we ended up jettisoning it because we didn't eat dinner until relatively late.)
Other things we need to do today:
1) Advance the ball on the class we teach.
2) Make time for a weekly meeting of the calendars. This is something we re-instituted last week after having let it slide, and it helps a lot for us.
About those 4 papers--they're likely to be a real time sink, so we will have to wait on them until other stuff is done. But then they'll pile up. (You can see how paralysis can set in at this point. Only today I'm not going to let it.)
Something I want to talk about here sometime in the future: Implementing the Getting Things Done "30-000 feet review" more effectively. It tends to be the first aspect of GTD that I let slide, even though I know how important that is to the system's effectiveness.
Bashofan
Back for my second day as a pro. I didn't get a chance to check-in yesterday, but I got about half the items done. Returned the call to M, but didn't get the laundry in until this morning (started already!) Went to work for about 2 hrs. Definitely used Pro's suggestion to commit to just 15 minutes to get started and it worked, especially when I needed to restart after a break. Drove k to her mom's house twice to feed their cats while mom is away on vacation.
Today, unfortunately, is almost exclusively committed to work because big project is due on Wednesday. I have wanted to do good on this project since I started it four months ago; why isn't that enough to end my procrastination...?
Other things I want to do today are:
Best wishes.
Convalalria and a Plan on Sunday 10.21am
Returning to work tomorrow after an extended absence. Feeling nervous. THE BACKLOG is still there. Home admin tasks are still not accomplished.......Paper piles at home are sill all there.
The Plan for today.
MITs for home:
School MIT's
Convalaria
Back to work already! Hope you're completely recovered! Good luck getting back into the swing of things at work.
Jo
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
Movingalong's weekly "hope-to" goals
Here is my list of "Hope-To" items for the week.
By posting them, I have begun to become more willing to do some of them.
This seems to be the only way I am able to "check in", as I am very resistant to "to-do" lists.
I merely post some things I hope to do, and maybe do some of those things.
I usually don't report back afterwards, to say if I did the stuff or not. (I am resistant to "reporting"). LOL.
But posting my "hope to" list helps a little bit.
(and contemplation of financial planning that I had been avoiding.)
(note: This is one I've really been avoiding).
(Have avoided this every week, too.)
--- movingalong
Weekly 12-Step Meeting in Meetings Chatbox
Meeting is held:
Click on following link to get exact time/Timezone details and chatbox info:
http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/1398
This is a 12-Step meeting.
NOTE: The chatbox does not keep permanant record of meeting. (If by chance there are residual words left in scroll after meeting, we add lines of words so that the meeting scrolls out of view.)
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Each person should come or not come according to their own inner guidance -- i.e. the Higher Power of their understanding.
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