Advance Directives, or Procrastination?
Advance directive, or procrastination? Some choice. But that’s what it comes down to. Most people will put off these kinds of decisions because they don’t know how, or don’t have time, or they’ll get to it later…if they think about it at all.
There was a brief moment a few years ago, when Terri Schiavo was a political football, that a lot of people thought about it, but then…
Okay, so most of us are terrible procrastinators, especially when it comes to making long-term decisions. Wayne Gretzky hits us with, “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” Ouch!
But this one is easier than it sounds
People who teach and write about time management say that one of the best ways to beat procrastination is to break tasks down into easy to accomplish steps. If you put “advance directive” on your to-do list today, when do you think it would get done? It probably wouldn’t.
So this post isn’t so much about advance directives as it is about taking a single step: print out the advance directive form for your state.
All you have to do is go to the American Hospital Association’s site called Put It In Writing where they have a link to a page with forms for all 50 states. Or, you can go directly to the 50 states page, and print out a copy or two from your state. Easy so far.
When you’re done with that, add this to your to-do list: Read and fill in the form.
That’s about it. Once you’ve done that, here are a few additional, easy to accomplish steps:
- Get your witness and advocate signatures as needed
- Put the original in a safe place where someone can find it–not a safe deposit box
- Give photocopies to your advocate/alternate and anyone else that might become involved in your health care
- Discuss it with them
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