I’ve been procrastinating on writing this blog post, but now it is getting late, and if I’m not going to kill my series when it has barely started, it’s time to act.

I know why I’ve been procrastinating – I checked the last two blog posts (here and here) that I wrote on this subject, and it looks like I’ve said what I was thinking of saying, only better.

So I’m going to take a slightly different tack this year. The theme for today is Act, but I’m actually thinking more about commitment. It makes sense, though, because I find that when I fail to act, it is almost always because of a lack of commitment to the plan of action.

I’m great at making plans and setting out courses of action, with to-do lists and schedules and all that good stuff. But if I haven’t committed to the action, I will find excuses instead – I won’t have time, I’ll have other priorities, or I’ll whine about how hard it is.

If I do find a good why for the action, one that really makes me commit to it, then I just do it. There are no complicated stories in my head, no excuses, no “I need to do this”. My newest favourite podcaster, Jefferey Combs, says that any time we use the words “I need” or “I guess” it shows a lack of commitment, and that leads to a lack of action. I tried tracking my use of those words for a while in my journalling, and I found that he was right. Any time I wrote myself directives that I needed to do something, I invariably didn’t do it. How many times have you told yourself that you needed to exercise more and eat less? To quote Dr. Phil, how’s that working for ya?

So here is my declaration to the world: I will banish the word “need” from my action vocabulary, and I will choose actions that I can commit to wholeheartedly. I’m very curious to see whether I act more and procrastinate less.

How about you, how do you choose action instead of procrastination?