21 Days to a More Disciplined Life: Day 16

I am reading 21 Days to a More Disciplined Life as part of my goals for 2014 and I'm sharing insights from each day's readings. If you want to catch up on my progress, read previous days: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15.

Day 16:
Eat your frog. My mom always talked about this when she was teaching. She'd tell us to get the subject done first that we struggled with or didn't like so we wouldn't procrastinate on it. Today Crystal talks about the same thing with our daily tasks. This chapter is a challenge to stop procrastinating on that one thing you don't want to do. I have to make sure I get my workout done first thing in the morning because if I don't do it then, I will most likely not do it at all. It's not that I don't like working out, I actually enjoy the exercise and especially the way I feel after it. The reason I have to do it first is that I don't want to get out of bed. If you haven't noticed it yet, I do not like mornings so it takes a lot of discipline to make myself get out of bed earlier than usual to workout. When you start the day with the thing you like least, the rest of the day is more enjoyable and it gives you some extra momentum for the rest of the day. Crystal then goes one step further and tells us to not only do the thing we like least first, she also says to do the thing we enjoy the most last. Then we have an extra incentive to finish our other tasks.
Practical Application: 1. Crystal challenged us to read the article Start Your Day by Eating a Frog (which is really good) for extra tips on learning to prioritize our days. 2. Determine what you tend to procrastinate on and develop a plan of action for making it a first priority. Don't forget that sometimes procrastination is a sign that you need to break the task up into smaller steps.

Mega Project Progress: I didn't get to my mega project today as I am playing catch up on housework. We were out of town for a few days as Jared had a speaking engagement over the weekend. The day after we got we had the privilege of hosting some missionary friends of ours so I had to put things off for a day, which is something that Crystal talks about on Day 15.

General Progress: Even though I was out of town for 3 days, I left the house with a clean kitchen and a tidied up house. I also got my 4th and 5th workouts in for the week while we were away. I am excited to say that I have now kept a clean kitchen for 20 whole days!