No Excuses November: beating procrastination

We have a month, week or day for everything. November ranges from “International Stand up to Bullying Day to World Hello Day. The Fitness Examiner is going to suggest one more for the list: “No Excuses November.”

Procrastination is the grave that success is buried in.

This is not where this writer pretends he’s some shining example of time management. The Fitness Examiner can procrastinate with the best of them. But procrastination is a success killer, whether it is homework being put off or not taking the run you planned to take.

Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week

It must be the busiest day, because everything is going to get done tomorrow. Your diet starts tomorrow. You’ll start getting up early to exercise tomorrow.  Then when the alarm goes off and you decide it’s too early to get up, you promise yourself that you’ll do it…..tomorrow.

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. – Martin Luther King Jr.

Setting too many goals or making promises too big to keep are also forms of self-sabotage.  We enjoy success and it drives us to do more.  Likewise, failures tend to discourage us. Set small, realistic goals that you can achieve with some determination. If you are 40 pounds overweight and haven’t run a step in 20 years, planning to run the Mangrove Marathon in December probably isn’t a goal you will succeed at. If a marathon is your ultimate goal, great, but you should set (and achieve) other interim goals, such as running consistently, building up longer distances, perhaps running a couple of shorter distance races. Then maybe you can run it in December 2011.

Someday is not a day of the week

Here were are, fresh into “No Excuses November”. What do we do with it? How about picking 2 goals? Let’s pick one that we can achieve by the end of November and one that we can achieve by the end of the year, a little less than 8 weeks away.  For example, the Fitness Examiner knows he needs to spend more time on his bicycle, so the short term goal is to consistently ride 3 times a week for the rest of November. The year- end goal will be to increase the weekly distance by 20%.

You may delay, but time will not. – Ben Franklin

Lee County resident Carrie Young is a fellow procrastinator who completed her first 5k earlier this year at the Turtle Trot 5k. Procrastination set in and it’s been a while since that race in May, but this weekend, she’s back at it, running the Polly’s Run for Life 5K. This brings us to our final point. Slipping back into our procrastinating ways doesn’t mean you give up. When you miss your goal, go after it again. Every setback isn’t an indicator to throw in the towel; it’s a sign to give it another shot.

What can you set for your two goals and when can you start achieving them? If your answer is “tomorrow” or “someday”, go back to the top of the page. Keep your fitness journal up to date. See what you did and what you ate. Enjoy those achievements and use them to duplicate your success.

If you have questions or suggestions, please email me. To stay up on fitness related news, events and articles, follow on Twitter @FMFitness.