Procrastinator
I have a habit of procrastination when it comes to activities outside of my professional life. For so long, my professional life overtook my personal life, and I didn’t have enough hours in the day to do much beyond exercising, eating, and sleeping. I reserved the weekends for the things I didn’t get a chance to do during my 60-80 hour work weeks: catch up on TV shows, chores, and get some extra sleep. My long working hours affected the ability for me to work on personal projects that I was involved in. I was too exhausted (mentally and physically) to work on those projects; however, I don’t have that excuse to fall back on now.
I have a list of to-do’s that I haven’t worked on, mainly because I didn’t have the time but also because I kept putting them off. This weekend, I had an epiphany while thinking about my future. I’ve let excuses and procrastination stop me from re-engaging into my personal projects, so I came up with this simple little mantra to help me move forward:
Stop procrastinating and just do it.
I have decided that’s going to be my slogan from now on. I have been putting off many projects that include redesigning a musician fan site that I run, working on Project Chadwick (a top secret effort that’s been in progress for a year), and rebooting my efforts with Project P (another top secret effort). I had my reasons for not getting some of this finished. It’s hard to work on them without a PC, which was my issue for a couple of months after my laptop died. Now that I have a new laptop (for the past two months), there is no logical reason why I can’t work on any of these projects. Plus, at least two of these projects are key to my future; I’ve got to start making efforts to make them my present. That being said, I’ve already started moving forward on one project.
I have relaunched my efforts for redesigning the musician fan site I run as of this weekend. While that isn’t key to my future, I have procrastinated the most with that effort. My plan was to launch a new version late last year. Obviously, I’m way behind. I need to go ahead and get that out of the way so I can throw my full concentration on projects that hold the key to my future: Project Chadwick, Project P, and my possible startup. However, I can’t say that the web site redesign will be a waste of my time. I plan to code the site with a fresh code base and will do it in Crimson Editor. For me, that’s a huge step because I have always used a web site creation program. I understand code; I just never coded without the help of a WYSIWYG editor. I decided I wanted to challenge myself, and while I dislike coding, it will only help me advance my skill sets and allow me to say, “I coded it from scratch.” Once I get that done, I will work on my other two personal projects simultaneously. Even if I squeeze in an hour or two per day, that’s better than nothing. Each little bit of progress will only help me move forward and get these projects to closure. I just have to remember to stop procrastinating and just do it.