A week or so ago, as I sat in my chair and looked around the room at all of the books I keep meaning to read, oracle card decks I want to get better at reading, DVDs I’ve yet to watch and notebooks I’ve yet to fill with ink from pens I’ve yet to write with, I suddenly had an idea. I was going to make an “Adventures in Procrastination Jar”.

Since I had no jar available (and didn’t want to put it off until I bought one), I used a microwaveable bowl with a lid, as shown below.

I found a mailing label template online, and printed about thirty blank labels out. Then, I sat with my colored pens, and began to write a label for each of the things I’d been putting off that I could possibly think of… and then printed off a second sheet of labels, because baby, I was on a roll!  I wrote down things like “Make bad art,” “Do a Tae Bo workout,” “Color for a half hour” and “Watch something from your Amazon Prime list,” and I just kept going. Then, I cut the labels out, folded them, and put them in the jar (or rather, the bowl).

Each day, I shake the jar bowl, close my eyes, reach in and pull out a piece of paper. As long as it’s humanly and physically possible, that is my “Adventure in Procrastination” for the day. 

Sometimes, it’s not possible, like when I pulled “Write a blog entry” last Wednesday, when I knew I was going to be at work all day, and not getting home until after 8 o’clock at night. So, I put it aside for another day, which happens to be today! There are no real rules here, and no “right” or “wrong” way to do this. It’s just one way of actually doing something, rather than looking at stuff and saying “I really need to do that one of these days.”