Guest Author - Jennifer Minekheim

Procrastination is the enemy of the “Living Simply” lifestyle. Why is that, you say? It robs you of contentment, leaving you with a vague feeling of dread that hangs over every minute of your day. Believe me; I know the evil that is procrastination. In fact, I am intimately familiar with it. My boyfriend nags me about it on a regular basis, but he, unfortunately, is just as bad as I am. (This is terrible, but knowing that makes me inordinately happy!)

Procrastination is defined by Dictionary.com as “to put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness, or to postpone or delay needlessly.” Whether it is postponing unpleasant chores like washing the dishes or delaying unpleasant conversations, many of us are guilty. How many times have we told ourselves we would talk to a coworker or friend about an uncomfortable subject,only to decide that now isn’t the best time to confront them, we’ll talk to them the next time. This habit leads to feelings of stress and and resentment that could easily be avoided.

In general, procrastination makes everything worse. For example, you’re pulling a load of clean clothes out of the dryer, but you don’t feel like putting them away at the time, so you dump them on your bed. Then, when it’s time to go to bed, you’re tired, so you pile them up on the floor in the corner of your bedroom and promise yourself you’ll put them away the next day. Then, in the morning after you’ve hit the snooze button a few times, you’re running late and can’t find anything to wear. For a moment, you’re filled with relief when you remember the pile of clean clothes on the floor. When you go to pick out something to wear, however, that excitement turns to misery, because now your clothes are a wrinkled mess, and you have to stop and iron them before you can do anything else.

In order to save time, you put off hanging up your clothes. Instead, you wasted more time and you were late for work. In addition to that, you still had to iron and put away the rest of the clothes when you came home that night. Not only did you make more work for yourself, you also probably felt guilty every time you passed by that pile of clothes and wasted time thinking about how you should really be putting them away.

I could describe several more scenarios that most of us have experienced at one time or another, but the end result is always the same. Procrastination wastes our time, increases our stress, and frequently prevents us from moving forward in both our personal and professional lives. Before you get too depressed reading this, there is a way out. We are ultimately in control of how we live our lives and can nip procrastination in the bud!

To stop avoiding unpleasant tasks, schedule them for when you have enough time to complete them properly. If you wash your dishes right after you finish dinner instead of letting them sit in the sink for a while, you’re more likely to also dry them and put them away instead of letting them air-dry in the dish rack for a few days. If you leave your laundry until late in the evening when you’re tired, you will be tempted to leave the clothes in the dryer, where they may sit for a long time.

Another way to avoid doing hefty jobs you dread, is to take care of them when they are little and quick. Put your dishes into the dishwasher immediately after you use them instead of letting them pile up in the sink. When you get your mail, pull out the junk mail immediately and put it in the recyclable bin. Organize the rest of it appropriately and you won’t have a huge pile of papers spilling all over your desk, resulting in all kinds of missed deadlines, late fees, etc. Get gas on the way home from work when you notice your tank is getting low and you won’t have to stop on the way to work when it’s dark and cold because you don’t have enough fuel to make it there.

Stopping procrastination in its tracks is the key to adopting a simpler lifestyle. While it’s definitely a challenge (why do you think my examples sound so realistic?), the rewards of doing the things you need to do as soon as they need to be done are enormous. What are you waiting for??? Organize that sock drawer today!