I always look forward to the arrival of the new year.

This time of year offers the perfect opportunity for self-assessment. You can examine what’s working, what isn’t working, and how to take corrective action.

When I began my minimalist journey, I had a rough plan in place. But I wasn’t certain where the minimalist path would lead me. So far, I am happy to report that I’m doing great. 2010 was a year of struggle — for many people, including myself. However I feel these challenging times have helped me grow mentally stronger and more capable of handling life’s obstacles.

While I’m cautiously pleased with the progress I have made living a minimalist lifestyle, I still am hungry to take things to a new level for 2011. I have taken a significant amount of time to determine what I want to accomplish in 2011. But from all the goals I have, the biggest one is to eliminate procrastination.

This common goal seems to appear out of place in the minimalist world. But I am realizing that procrastination seems to be the sludge consistently holding back many goals that would are shared by many minimalists.

For instance, here are some sub-goals of mine for 2011:

  1. I want to be writing for Men’s Health as a regular contributor by December 1st, 2011.
  2. I want to have $5,000 in my savings account by September 23rd, 2011.
  3. I want to be an active participant in life that goes after what I want and faces challenges directly and immediately.

These goals don’t seem to have much to do with each other initially. But completing my main goal of eliminating procrastination helps me reach all of these goals. For instance, by not delaying to write whenever I feel the impulse, I am providing myself more opportunities to write fantastic articles. The better I write, the more likely I am to earn income. As my income grows, I can more rapidly earn by goal of saving $5,000 by September 23rd. As my financial situation steadily improves, I would more than likely move to my desired studio apartment. As I have discussed before, a studio is not for everybody. But at this point in my life it’s exactly what I want to help me move forward with minimalism. And as a result, I will have less demand physically, as well as on my time. This freedom allows me to achieve my third sub-goal more easily. All of these goals are connected and easily achievable by tackling the big goal of eliminating procrastination completely.

Think about how many problems most minimalists want to solve such as excess, not having enough time, and debt. These things stem from procrastination.

I don’t believe there is a magic bullet to defeat procrastination. I believe it’s going to take a lot of hard work and a healthy degree of self-awareness to change an ingrained habit. The good news is that procrastination is just that — a habit. Habits can always be reversed. Unfortunately, like anything worthwhile, the transformation doesn’t occur overnight.

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Self-Development

December 29, 2010

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