THE POWER OF DEADLINES AND ACCOUNTABILITY

I don't know about you, but I can procrastinate really well. I would even venture to say it is a talent of mine. When it comes to doing something I don't want to do, I will clean the house, leave a note on all of my friends' FB walls, arrange my yard -and I don't even garden-... in short, I will do anything before that THING I am avoiding.

I find that I do much better when I have a solid deadline for the things I am trying to accomplish. I do even better when the deadline is not completely self imposed and involves some kind public accountability (you can procrastinate taxes only so long...).

When it comes to training, I have learned to leverage that trait of mine to create opportunities for me to be more disciplined.
Here are some of the things that I found helpful to stay on track with my training. I bet some of them will work for you too!

- Sign up for a race or some kind of competition. If you are in any kind of competitive sport, sign up for an event: a 5K, a weight lifting meet, a Spartan race, a swim meet, a soccer league game. Find something that will motivate and maybe sometimes force you to stay consistent. No one wants to enter a competitive event to score their worse or let their team down. Try it, it helps.

- Post your goals publicly. Does the thought of a public embarrassment make you cringe? Then post your goals publicly. As publicly as possible. Tell your whole family that you want to lose 20 lbs (especially that brother in law who kind of wants to see you fail), shout to the FB world how many pounds you intend on being able to squat 6 months from now... If you have a goal, go ahead tell the world.

- Have an accountability group. That one can be tremendous help. A group who shares common goals, expects you to stick to the task at hand and supports you though the hard times can be a significant influence for good. If you and I are both quitting sugar and reporting daily to each other, I am going to have a real hard time looking at you in the eye if I had a bag of mini Twixes yesterday. Peer pressure can be of help, but an accountability group is an even greater place to find support, encouragement and help.


If you have any other tips to share on how to increase our ability to avoid procrastination and stay consistent in our training, please, post them in the comment section!