Part of being an adult means doing a lot of little errands that are, to speak generously, time-consuming and draining. Things like getting your oil changed, making appointments, returning purchases to the store, filling out paperwork, going to three different stores for five different items, returning a phone call or text, figuring out why your credit card bill is off by $2—you get it. And if you don’t stay caught up on your adulting to-do list, then you’ll likely find yourself either completely behind in life or swapping potentially relaxing weekends for traffic and tasks. Nobody really told me how relentless all this extra work of being a grownup would be, and some months I end up rewriting the same list over and over in my planner, but it never seems to get checked off. Then, when I finally take care of whatever it is, I feel immensely better and wonder why it took me so freaking long to follow through.
Now, whenever I’m procrastinating on life’s various assignments, I remind myself of that feeling of being done—and I’ve learned a couple of tricks to help motivate myself over the mental hump of “Ugh, I don’t wannaaaaa.”