Happy Daylight's Savings Day!

And what will we do with our bonus hour this morning?!

"Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible."-- George Claude Lorimer

I'm working on my article for Tricycle magazine, my upcoming TEDx talk and some administrative work tasks.

For those of you who may not know WHAT to do with this delicious bit of time, here's five tips from Dr. Craig Kain on how to combat procrastination:

Challenge your myths.

We all create myths or rules that dictate how and when we approach a task. These can range from "I do my best work under pressure" to "in order to do this task I must have two uninterrupted hours." All of our myths can be challenged. For example, many of us say we can't exercise today because we don't have a long enough time to get a good workout in. Yet research shows that even 20 minutes of brisk walking three times a week is beneficial. If you believe you do your best work under pressure, make your goal to finish a project early (which should cause some additional pressure). There are very few of our myths that can't be challenged.Break it down.Trying to do all of our tasks at once or all of one task at once often leads to feeling overwhelmed and to an inner dialog that tells us, "You will never get that done today so why even start?" Tasks are much easier if taken one at a time or one part at a time. If we keep up with paying our bills (or better yet, set up the majority of them so that they are paid automatically), then paying a single bill immediately after it arrives in the mail will be no big deal. If we procrastinate, we'll be left with a stack of bills and find ourselves trying to find enough time to pay them all at once.Ask for help.If you procrastinate because you aren't sure you know how to do a task, ask for help. Same goes for a task that is impractical for one person to complete. Often our belief that we should be able to do a task alone keeps us from doing it at all.Make yourself accountable.Ask a friend, spouse, or even a therapist to help you keep yourself accountable. Let this person know the task you need to complete, the deadline for completion, and benchmarks for progress (e.g. I want to have half of it done by ...). Arrange for a regular check-in time with the person each day or week. It is not important that the person understand the task or know how to do it himself or herself. What is important is his or her commitment to holding you to your self-established deadlines.Learn how to tell time.Many people underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task believing that it will take less time or that they will have more time available to work on it. Make appointments with yourself in writing for when you will complete your task and add them to your calendar. USE A TIMER to get a more realistic sense of how much time it takes to complete a task. Remember that you only have a limited number of productive hours in the day and can only accomplish so much. Overextending ourselves only makes us feel overwhelmed and less motivated to complete tasks on time.Finally... Experts say that it takes between 30 to 90 days to form a habit so it may take that long to break the habit of procrastinating. While you may not entirely break free of it at first -- you may procrastinate in one area of your life but not in others -- any progress is a step toward the end goal of living procrastination free. While getting from here to there may be difficult, the reward of living a less anxious, stressed, and depressed life is well worth the effort.