“We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going… Concentrate on something useful.” –Arnold Bennett

I’ll admit it, sometimes I don’t feel like working or writing or answering my e-mails or my phone. And in occasion, I’ll fess up here, I don’t love going to the gym. And when I get into these mindsets, I have an uncanny ability to scare up a few dozen other things I could be doing instead, things as varied and fascinating as organizing my receipts or walking the dog or catching up on some reading.

Sometimes I’ll even procrastinate on one thing by doing something else which I had been procrastinating on, but which somehow seems preferable to the more pressing thing to put off. Like, sometimes I don’t want to write and that I will choose the gym over writing.

I am truly blessed and lucky that I absolutely love what I do and my periodic bouts with procrastination are minor inconveniences. I also know I have the good fortune to have the tools to overcome procrastination by communicating with my other than conscious mind and working on setting my intention daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, to gauge my success.

Procrastination is avoidance. But sometimes there is value in procrastination, sometimes avoiding one thing can push you into another.

Time is of the essence. We’ve all heard this and most likely, we’ve felt the impact of not having enough hours in a day. Time management is difficult when procrastination is an issue so having a way to reroute the procrastination is vital. Procrastination is a habit that can be broken. When you break an old habit, however, it’s important to have a new one in its place, a system for dealing with the ruts that we’ve gotten into over time.

Your intention can make or break you. (As will a lack of intention). Switching your intention or setting it with resolve is setting your other than conscious mind on a mission to help you to accomplish what you want.

Try this: have a conversation with your other than conscious. Ask it for its help in turning a new leaf on getting things done. Set small goals at first, goals that you are certain you can keep, because you are training your other-than-conscious to work on your behalf. So if you say, ‘I’m going to take out the garbage’, take out the garbage. That’s totally doable. And if you say, ‘Okay, tomorrow I’m going to make two phone calls which I will follow up on with letters’, make those two phone calls and write those two letters.

Visualize yourself keeping your appointments with yourself, following up on your intentions, and getting things done. By creating this synergy with your intention, other-than-conscious, imagination and your deep desire to accomplish what you need to accomplish, you have the ability to push past any procrastination problems you might encounter.