It is just simply hard to believe that the year is passing so quickly! And yet my birthday and Mother’s Day are both behind us already.

Sometimes I go through a stretch where I am rather productive but then I an go through other stretches where I am . . . shall we say, not so productive. Even though I do things that I enjoy during those times, I end up feeling like a failure or lazy, and yet I find it hard to get out of the unproductive cycle.

These times usually begin when I’ve had a good reason for taking a day off and relaxing. It is bad when one of those days happens just prior to a ‘lazy’ weekend or one full of celebrations and such. It should be easy to break out of this cycle with the beginning of a new week, but unfortunately sometimes it just isn’t. Then if Monday goes by the wayside, inertia seems to be in full motion and it takes some external reason or force comes into play.

You see, I’m also good at procrastination. The way out of this vicious cycle is to be determined. I know that sounds hard but at some point you get fed up with what you are, or aren’t doing, as the case may be, and you just decide to break out of the cycle. This is usually easier at the beginning of the day or after some other happening, like lunch or such.

Then to ensure that I don’t fall back into that cycle, I purposely don’t allow myself to do whatever the thing is that traps me. If it is watching television, then I don’t allow myself to watch ANY until all the things I NEED to accomplish are accomplished or I have reached the evening and family is going to watch something together. If it is reading, I save it for a ‘reward’ of sorts, for accomplishing all I need to accomplish for the day and then allow myself to read. Whatever the thing that sidetracks me, is what I keep myself from doing until I’ve completed the things that are important and need to be accomplished first.

When I’m in a cycle of procrastinating on getting my blog post prepared at a reasonable hour of the day, I keep myself from checking mail and facebook  until I have completed it. You can apply this principle to just about anything; it helps get back on track.

Well, I hope my ramblings have given you some ideas on how to handle your procrastination or cycles of being unproductive.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº