It's been some time I did not pick up the digital quill in order to put down my thoughts, even if it is part of this new year's resolution: I wanted to write an article per week.

But here we are, February is verging to its end and I haven't published even one article (although there are hundreds of ides running in my head). And I didn't achieve this goal due to a series of “non actions” that affects most of our daily lives: procrastination. I went through its “vicious circle” while building up my second company in 2015.

Luckily I found a way to get out of it with by organising myself.

We all have lived through procrastination: when facing repetitive and difficult tasks, our mind pushes them for later and wanders into easy, mastered and joyful activities. Who has never felt like not working on an essay for school or simply skipped a gym workout, using silly excuses as the weather or how one had slept the day before ?

It's ok to be lazy from time to time in order to regenerate ourselves physically and mentally, but some of us delay even further the unfinished work.And that can trigger a vicious circle affecting our state of mind and soon our physical wellbeing.

Once you postpone a task, it will end up in your mental bucket list. Staying there, it will tax part of your mental energy, not letting you to be fully engaged in your other daily activities. Add a few other tasks to that bucket list and you might not see the light at the end of the tunnel. You start by being frustrated, but you can even enter a state of depression and be on the path to developing some other mental illness.Worse, your physical state can also suffer: entering the Vicious Circle, you are transiting from an active lifestyle to a passive one: rather than going for a run, you might pass most of your time watching online TV or engaging in social media.

In order to break from the Vicious Cycle, you need to clear your mental bucklist. But, following the Roman saying "Mens sana in corpore sano”, don"t forget to take care of your physical health: you need to get out of a consuming state into an active state. That translates into transforming your daily habits: cut down on your TV / social media time and get out, focus on physical activities (from the gym to simply go walk 5000 steps around your neighboorhood) and real-life social intereaction.

Don't forget to dedicate time to think about a vision of what you want to achieve in the long term; once you have it, put realistic interconnected milestones to realise that vision on a piece of paper.At this stage, ponder upon which tasks need to be performed to complete each milestone.

Let me give you an example: I would like to be fit enough to run the NYC marathon within the next 2 years [milestone 1].

That means that I need to get physically fit to run a marathon in a year [milestone 2] and before that a semi-marathon [milestone 3] and before that a 5 km race [milestone 4].

Is it realistic? Probably yes, if I can build up a plan (plan A) to execute it, which will take into consideration that I need to start training on a weekly [project 1] and later on a daily basis [project 2], sticking to a certain diet [project 3] and sleep patterns [project 4].

Being realistic, I need to take into account possible injuries and create a plan B to achieve the milestones (can rowing help me while my tendons are hurt?). Taking Project 1 (running on a weekly basis), I can start to run 3 times a week on 3.2 km run. After several weeks of running and seing that my cardio and weight have improved, I can reasses the task and start to run for 4.2 km until I reach my 5 km milestone.

The above example shows a methodology: cut a big project or vision into small doable tasks, that have a start and a finish. By applying this methodology, you will soon find out that you can accomplish those small tasks and surprisingly you will end up fulfilling the vision. You are entering another cycle: a virtuous one, where you gather positive energy each time you finish a task.

I procrastinate a lot, finding excuses for not finishing some tasks. But I will take my own advice and start to write an article per week and publish it here. At the end, without trying to go back in time and write the articles for January and February, I should be able to finish the year with 45 articles, which is not that bad.

To be able to do that I will restrict myself to a maximum of 700 words and see where that goes (this is my ralistic approach).So, if I can get out of my procrastination, I will challenge you to do the same!