It’s so easy to put things off. Take my last two weeks. I haven’t posted here, even though I fully intended to. I even had posts photographed and written.

I had some great excuses — I moved house among other things. But I could come up with good excuses every day of the week. I’m quite inventive!

It doesn’t make me feel good, however, to kick any can down the road to be dealt with later. I hate not doing what I say I’m going to do. That’s where the power of setting a deadline comes in. It really works, and I find that the more I try to stick to meeting my personal and work deadlines, the stronger that muscle becomes.

I moved my family from our home which is going to be remodeled, to our old smaller home, a townhouse, which we’ve been renting out these past few years. Through a misunderstanding, I ended up with both the boxes that were supposed to move with us, plus all of the boxes that were meant to go into storage. They were not labeled well, so I had to open up and painstakingly look through every single one. I got a bit overwhelmed, not helped by an early morning tumble down the stairs on Friday the 13th. I told you I had good excuses!

I decided to hold a family birthday dinner here last Saturday. It was a crazy thing to do, but that deadline gave me the focus to keep going through boxes, sorting the contents, and putting everything away until late into the night. I called the movers to take all of the incorrectly delivered boxes to a storage unit, and I even managed to put up a few decorations, bake a lasagna, and some cupcakes!

Don’t get me wrong, I was exhausted, but I was also very happy with myself. It was a fun night celebrating the newest six year old in our family. I woke up on Sunday to a lovely comfortable home. There’s still a backlog of laundry and office work to tackle, but I can walk around without tripping over boxes, my kids can find their stuff, and we can have friends pop in, which would not have happened for another few weeks without that deadline!