Solve the Procrastination Problem: Off-Season WLC Skill Practice

The Off-Season WLC Skill Practices are mini-challenges intended to help you fine-tune different aspects of your health and wellness. Offered between Challenges, these weekly practices address fitness, nutrition, stress reduction, productivity, and personal connection — because health is about far more than food and the gym (and we could all use a little practice)

End Procrastination with Small Steps Each Day This Week

Simple Instructions:

1. Do one thing each day this week that you’ve been “meaning to do” for a long time.
2. It doesn’t matter how big or how small the task happens to be — just get it done.
3. Congratulate yourself once the task is complete.

Why Is This Skill Practice Important?

We’ve all been there — standing at the threshold of what looks like an insurmountable to-do list. There is so much to get done, it almost doesn’t seem worth getting started.

What do you start with? And why bother if there are ten more things that come next? Isn’t it too late to send those thank-you cards anyway? And, really, who has the time to get any of these things done?

The irony is that when we have a to-do list hanging over our heads, it’s likely we’re spending more time and energy torturing ourselves over not doing things than it would take to just do them — the act of procrastination takes up more of our schedule than the action itself would.

The key to solving the procrastination problem is to create momentum.

Consider this — have you ever tried to push a car? At first, it’s really hard, and it might even seem impossible.

But once you get the car to budge, even a bit, it loosens from the ground and becomes easier to push. With each step forward, it takes less and less effort to maintain the momentum and make progress. Before you know it, that car is all the way across the parking lot or out of the ditch.

Luckily, life works this way, too.

This week’s skill practice is about making that first budge. By picking one thing to do each day that you can mark off that to-do list forever, you are creating momentum. And once you’ve got your wheels rolling, you might surprise yourself with just how much you can make happen.

Becca Borawski Jenkins

Becca earned her MFA in Cinema-Television Production at USC’s famed film school, and her first career was as a music editor. Becca found her way to career number two through martial arts. She trained in BJJ and muay Thai and worked with professional MMA fighters, building websites, organizing fight promotions, and producing videos.

In 2005, she became a student at CrossFit Los Angeles where she met WLC co-founders Andy Petranek and Michael Stanwyck. In only a couple years, she became CrossFit Level III Certified, left her entertainment career, and dedicated herself full time to coaching, serving as the Program Director of CFLA and founder of the CFLA CrossFit Kids program. After seven years as a music editor and then eight years as fitness instructor, Becca segued to her current career — full-time editor and writer.