1. Set up a 401k. You keep telling yourself you’ll do this when you’re older, and then one day you realize that you are older. People tell you that you don’t have to start worrying about planning for retirement until you’re 25, but suddenly you are 25 – almost 26 – almost 27 – almost 65. You always tell yourself you’re going to walk into work today with your sole purpose being to talk to someone about your 401k plan, but then something happens or you get tied up in a huge meeting or it’s just Monday, and you end up blowing it off.
2. Make a website. Everyone loves to say that it’s crucial to have a personal website these days if you take your career at all seriously. What the hell are you supposed to put on a website? You had enough trouble making your one-page resume look impressive. Now, on top of that, you have to come up with an online version with multiple tabs about why you’re so great? You continue to put this off and tell yourself that you’ll spend one weekend holed up in your apartment working on it. Instead, you spend that weekend ordering a large pizza (for one) and doing everything except make a personal website.
3. Work on your “personal brand.” When most people hear the word “personal brand” they feel an immediate sense of dread. It’s because they associate “personal branding” with sending and responding to annoying messages on LinkedIn, going to networking events and talking to strangers about God knows what, and using their Twitter account to share impressive-sounding articles that they haven’t actually read. Most of the time, this is what personal branding is like, which is why you always tell yourself you’re going to work on creating an impressive brand and then you just end up reading E! Online articles for 2 hours instead.
4. Do sit-ups every day. And then by summer, you’re going to look ah-mazing. Like Jillian Michaels, but less angry. That’ll show ’em. You follow this routine faithfully for 4 days and then you quit because sit-ups are boring and it’s more fun to eat a lot of food and then hate yourself.
5. Read that self-improvement book you bought 6 months ago. Something along the lines of a how-to guide on fixing everything in your life in 3 easy steps. You bought it one day while you were in Barnes & Noble and you were feeling particularly chubby, single, and poor. You bought it with the intention of going home, pulling an all-nighter, and reading the book cover to cover. You ended up standing in front of the fridge for an hour and crying instead, telling yourself you’d read it tomorrow. But then a bunch of other tomorrow’s happened and the self-improvement book became a coaster for your large glasses of white wine instead.
6. Try anything you found on Pinterest. Recipes. Do-It-Yourself home improvement projects. Hair styles. Wedding ideas for your non-existent wedding. Your Pinterest account is like the June Cleaver version of you, and you tell yourself that one day, you will try ALL THE THINGS.
7. Organize your closet. It’ll be perfect. You’ll make it color-coordinated. Or arrange everything according to the season. Or have slutty stuff on one end, and work clothes on the other, with the middle ranging from sassy to classy to I-was-feeling-hopeful-and-bought-this-one-size-smaller-than-I-should-have. You want your closet to look like Cher’s in Clueless, but for now, you’re just going to keep putting off the organization until you are desperate enough to find that sweater that went missing a year ago.
8. Stop eating food in your bed. You’re probably overly confident about this one, convinced that you could absolutely abstain from doing it when really, it’s nearly impossible. Now that laptops and tablets have basically become our tv’s, what’s the point of sitting upright on a couch when you could lay horizontally in your bed, being completely worthless and binge watching a show while consuming an entire meal?
9. Make your bed every day. It would be nice to come home every day to a room that looks like a semi-respectable adult lives and sleeps in it each night. And it can start with something as simple as making your bed. Even though it honestly takes about 27 seconds (because basically all you do is fix the pillows and then throw your comforter on top of your sheets in a somewhat decent-looking way) it’s still 27 seconds that you could be doing nothing before you have to go to work for 9 hours and actually do stuff.
10. Refrain from constantly ordering take-out. That was the college you. Domino’s one night. Jimmy John’s the next. Chinese on the reg. But now you’re a young adult living a glamorous life. And young adults cook amazing, healthy meals with ingredients they buy at Whole Foods. You always tell yourself you’re going to start doing this. But Whole Foods is like a 15-minute walk and you could just order something online instead without having to even talk to a human. It’s like… what’s the point in even trying?
11. Floss. Next year. You’ll start flossing next year. Right now you’re too busy doing things that are actually fun.
12. Refrain from hitting the “snooze” button. Getting an extra 9 minutes of sleep never makes you hate mornings a little less. Instead, you’re just in that much more of a rush to get yourself together before you have to go be around other people. It feels great to hit Snooze in the moment, but then you have a dream where you get up and get ready for work, only to wake up 9 minutes later and realize none of it was real and now you’re late.
13. Eat kale. You hear enough about it on Instagram. And you’re sick of everyone telling you how delicious it is. It’s not delicious. It’s a leaf. But you want to start eating it just so you can tell people that, NO, eating cooked kale is not just like eating a potato chip.
14. Go to the gyno. You know it’s necessary and healthy and important and responsible. But even just hearing the word gyno makes you slam your legs together and feel immediately awkward and blegh. Because “blegh” is definitely a real word in this situation. You hate talking about vaginas but the gyno insists on it, for some reason. Rude.
15. Learn another language. In high school you learned enough French to attempt to show off at a restaurant when you traveled to France in college. But the waiter was not impressed when you said “Je voudrais le wine.” You owe it to your high school self to finish what you started and actually become fluent in another language. Because you remind yourself that everyone that isn’t American can usually speak 2 to 3 languages. Then you remember that everyone in the world basically speaks English and the lazy part of you is like Eh, might as well keep things simple and stick with English. Everyone’s already using it anyway. Au revoir. 
