When "Just Do it" just ain't doing it for you

Great run today. Week 5 is off to a good start. The sun shining in through my window convinced me to go without a jacket, just a T-shirt, light sweatshirt, leggings, gloves and my fleece headband. I regretted my decision for the first ten minutes, but then warmed up so much I was thankful I didn't have any other layers to sweat through. The program called for three 5 minute runs, with three minute intervals of walking, but I surprised myself and actually added a fourth run, in the interest of getting home early enough to take a nice long shower.

All in all, it was a fantastic and energizing run - but it almost didn't happen. I almost convinced myself to stay inside and avoid the freezing temperatures all together. I had plenty of reading to do, and a number of other plausible excuses that could have allowed me to stay holed up in my apartment guilt free, until my 1:40 class. Obviously, there must have been some serious source of motivation that got me out the door; some mantra that I repeated over and over to fight back the inherent laziness and just make me WANT to run. Right?

Nope. Didn't happen.

So what's my secret then? Well here it is. Write it down: Procrastination. In other words, I just kept putting off the decision not to run until I found myself dressed, out the door, and half way through my five-minute warm-up walk. Rather than berating or negotiating with myself every time the thought of skipping a run enters my head, I just put the thought to the side and tell myself I'll think about it later. See, I know myself, and the one thing that I've learned is that I just cannot win an argument with myself (Big_Shoes has yet to come to this realization, but he will get there). No amount of logic or inspirational quotes or personal pep-talks is going to work if I don't want to go, so I've stopped trying. I just put the decision off until I am literally at the very moment where I must either run, or turn around and go home. At that point, my ego usually takes over and demands that my ass get going, lest some mysterious onlooker realize that I was only outside of my apartment for 30 seconds before heading back with my tail between my legs. I'd say this works about 87 percent of the time. But in the 13 percent where I legitimately still do not want to run, I turn around and go home. It's that easy.

I think I do the same thing on my runs, when I look down at my cell phone and realize what felt like 7 minutes of running has, in fact, only been two. I don't eliminate the possibility of stopping early, but I don't make an immediate decision either. I just temporarily store it on my mental "To Do" list and keep going. Again, 87 percent of the time, by the time I get back to it, another 2 minutes has already passed and it just makes sense to keep going.

Procrastination gets a bad rap in general, and particularly in the exercise/healthy living community. But hey, for those of us who are natural procrastinators, the infamously annoying "Just Do It" catch phrase isn't going to cut it. So why not flip the negative connotation of procrastination on its head and turn it into a resourceful strategy? I mean, hey, it has worked pretty well for every term paper I have ever written (or, at least 87 percent of them...) and I pull damn decent grades, while simultaneously mastering the life skill of pulling an all-nighter. In all seriousness, at the very least my procrastination habit has taught me to work extremely well under pressure. So where's the harm?

Don't knock it til you've tried it, folks. Procrastination can be a beautiful thing.