This year instead of New Year Resolutions, my wife and decided to adopt a New Year’s mantra. We tell ourselves that we are “people of action.” It is our hope that through this mantra, we will better balance our time and stress.

So what do we mean by “people of action?” Simply put, it means don’t wait for tomorrow, do it today. For the longest time, we made a list of things that needed to get done eventually. These were items that were annoying but did not immediately require any kind of resolution. A lot of “we should…” or “sometime we need to…” fell into this list. The end result was simply a bunch of things that never got accomplished but yet still were not intrusive in our lives.

Here is a perfect example. The doorknob that leads from our house to the garage is old and the pin that keeps it in the lock mechanism has worn down to where the knob comes off sometimes when you turn it. You can put it back on but it is annoying. Before we were people of action, I would tell myself that I’d pick up a new doorknob when they were on sale or the next time I went to the hardware store. Of course I’d forget about it but still get annoyed when the knob came off.

Since I am now a person of action, the next day I swung by the hardware store, picked up a new knob, spent thirty minutes putting it in (stupid instructions were hard to follow) and now we have a brand new, fully working doorknob. As a plus, we never had the keys for the old knob, but now we do and we can come and go as we please. I could probably have saved $5 – $10 by waiting for a sale, but I’ve easily removed $5 – $10 of stress from my life not having to deal with the old one.

So that’s it. Nothing to fancy but this simple shift in mindset has helped both of us accomplish more this year than in the previous five years. Yeah, they are all minor little things, but they add up over time and contribute to overall stress. My life generates enough stress on its own that I don’t need to add any.

So I challenge you, when you tell yourself that “I’ll need to get to that sometime” be a person of action and make that sometime right now. You’ll be glad you did.