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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development, Self-Confidence
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Performance & Productivity, Personal Development
To Procrastinate Less, Start Doing These Five Things
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According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, procrastination may not be just a matter of laziness. It may also be related to a deep emotional strategy to avoid stress. That may explain why some people are always behind on projects, appointments, etc. Human beings will do anything to avoid stress – even if it comes at the cost of more stress later.
I personally get very annoyed when I get in a procrastination state because it is self-feeding. If I get behind on a single task or project, I have to delay other tasks to get it completed. It can be a downward spiral that is hard to dig out of.
Check out this list of five things you can do to help you out of that procrastination deathtrap:
- Be more precise in your small goals. Most people live in a very general world. They plan to get something done tomorrow, next week, etc. Stop doing that. Pick a very precise time on your calendar and commit to working on ‘that thing’ at that time.
- Be willing to live with “done > perfect”. A lot of people I know live in the constant state of getting ready to get ready. They are waiting for the perfect time, perfect amount of money, or perfect set of training before they embark on a new effort. There is no perfect anything. There is “as good as it is right now”. Stop waiting for perfection before attacking a task you want to avoid. If it’s something you don’t know how to do, search online. Someone has likely done it before and has written out step-by-step instructions online that you can follow.
- If something is painful, get it done sooner than later. If you keep postponing something you don’t want to do because you find it painful or annoying, realize that it is not going to get LESS painful or annoying the more you put it off. Take control and knock that task out ASAP. It’s better to plan it and plow your way though than to wait for it to become a non-optional emergency. How painful will it be then?
- Make it hard to procrastinate. This is especially if you work in front of a computer. Put roadblocks in your way that make you have to work really hard to put off working. There are countless utilities for your computer that can block your time wasting activities on and offline. If you are someone like me who lives a lot online the first thing you should do is install RescueTime. This will help you start measuring the time you are wasting. You can then install different browser plugins that block you visiting time-wasting websites and force you to focus. As I type this right now, I have “StayFocusd” and “Kill Facebook Newsfeed” Chrome extensions installed. The former gives me a limited amount of time on social media, news, viral, and other time-wasting sites each day. The latter blocks me from seeing my general Facebook news feed and allows me to hop in and only check messages specific groups that I want to monitor.
- Build in small rewards for small goals. Do you have any BHAGs (Big Hair Arse Goals) ? I know I have several. And they may not happen for five or ten years. When you are strategic in your life and plan for the long-term, you may get discouraged a long the way. I am sure you know that your long-term should be broken down into several short-term goals. Be sure you celebrate the short-term goals. Make a big deal about them. The celebrations will lift your spirits and remind you of the coming BHAG. It’s hard to celebrate BHAG every day when you won’t see it for months or years. But if your goal is to lose 20 pounds and you lose five, make a big about it in your life. Celebrate all successes.
Share your favorite tactic from the five above
[Tweet “Be more precise in your small goals”]
[Tweet “Be willing to live with Done > Perfect”]
[Tweet “If something is painful, get it done sooner than later”]
[Tweet “Make it hard to procrastinate”]
[Tweet “Build in small rewards for small goals”]
Click here to read the original article.
Performance & Productivity, Personal Development
Video: Choice Power is Greater Than Willpower
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I was able to track down Carrie Wilkerson (@barefoot_exec), author of The Barefoot Executive to get her thoughts on how simple choices affect our lives. Be sure you watch this from beginning to end and take her words about willpower to heart.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmsYRQ2D1s4″]
Attitude Adjustment
10 Happy Things To Think About When You Open Your Eyes
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The first one to five minutes after we wake up can frame our entire day. There are two thoughts that we have for every action. The first one is the decision whether or not to do a ‘thing’ that we know we have to get done. But the second often overlooked thought process is our attitude about the ‘the thing’ that has to get done. The attitude about getting something done can make the task miserable or joyful. But to control that you have to always be working on the conscious attitudes about what you are getting ready to do. The most important time that you need control your attitudes (or “meta thoughts”) are when you open your eyes in the morning.
Here are some suggested thoughts for when you open your eyes each day.
- “Holy cow. I’m alive for another day.”
- “There is a roof over my head. I am very grateful for that.”
- “Somebody else in the world loves me enough to want to share my bed with me. Oh cool. Look at that. She/He is right there. “
- “I need to get this body hydrated and moving. If I don’t take care of it, it will fall apart on me. A well-maintained pain-free body will allow me to accomplish my dreams and goals faster.”
- “Am I up early? Time to get a jump on the competition. Those suckers are still in bed. (Unless they are reading the same blog post I read on StopDoingNothing.com about morning thoughts)”
- “I am thankful that I have a smart kid who is not in jail or addicted to any substance.”
- “How can I use my time today to improve the life of the other people in this house?”
- “How can I best use my time today to improve the life of another person outside of this house?”
- “Who can I learn from today who knows more than me and can boost my intelligence?”
- “Do not get involved in petty arguments on or offline. They zap energy, make me defensive, are rarely productive, and they take time away from living my dreams.”
I’d love to hear what you think about when you wake up. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Performance & Productivity, Personal Development
Video: The importance of Imperfect Daily Action
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[youtube width=”640″ height=”360″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL1d36I4t2Q[/youtube]This is this the phrase that I have on my cell phone home page: Imperfect Daily Action. In reminds that small forwards steps are the best way forwards towards any achievement. It also helps me accept my imperfection and not get so down on myself for minor setbacks. Watch the video and let me know what you think.
Leadership Lessons
SDN016: Why You Should Learn the “Dark Arts” of Influence with Sharí Alexander
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In this episode I was lucky enough to track down Sharí Alexander in Southern California . She is one of the very experts you will find on the important topic of personal and professional influence. This is a subtle skill that the most successful people in the world have mastered and it has allowed them to have better control their environments and their outcomes. Grab a notepad as we hear Sharí tell us why this is a skill we need to have, and how we can start using it to our benefit. Click play on the podcast to start the show.
For more information about Sharí at Creative Live, Click Here.
You can read more about Sharí at her site: Observe, Connect, Influence
And follow her on Twitter at: @sharialexander
CLICK HERE to subscribe, listen and rate on iTunes
CLICK HERE to subscribe and listen on SoundCloud
CLICK HERE to subscribe and listen on Stitcher
Performance & Productivity, Personal Development
Three Immutable Laws of Discipline That Smart People Live By
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Plan everything or it will never happen
Manage your time as recurring daily, weekly and monthly appointments on your calendar. Most of your calendar should be recurring blocks of time that have you making consistent progress towards your highest priorities. Don’t forget to add in regular blocks for relaxation time, screw around time, family time, etc. These are important parts of our lives that we cannot afford to let happen by chance.
Live and die by your plan
Once you choose to live by #1, don’t mess around with your schedule. If your Wednesday says you are exercising from 6-8, don’t “get to it at 7”. At 6pm you drop whatever you are doing and exercise. You said it was important. You allocated the time. Now go do it. As you learn more about yourself and your priorities, your allocation of time may change. If that happens modify the block of time to better suit your life, or remove it. Don’t leave it on your calendar and keep skipping it thinking you’ll get to it someday. This is called discipline. Not “Something kind of like discipline”
Don’t wander aimlessly
Limit the amount of time you spend randomly browsing the internet. Stay off of social networking, news sites, etc. unless they are DIRECTLY related to you researching or working on your dreams. Every website today is designed to keep you there for as long as possible – doubly so for social media sites. Almost nobody gets on Facebook for just “five minutes”. Five minutes will rapidly turn into an hour. If you feel you need time to screw around on the internet, go see #1 and put it on your calendar. If it gets out of hand then read the bonus tip.
Bonus Discipline Tip:
Spending time in front of the computer is a great way to burn away unproductive hours of your life. If you know you are the type of person that has this problem, consider installing RescueTime. I have this running all of the time. It tracks all of the websites and programs that I use to show me how productive I am. Once you have it installed for a week you will get some amazing data that will probably surprise you about yourself and your habits. Use that information to improve how you manage time online. RescueTime is a must have app if you are having online discipline issues. Get it!
Was this good? Did you see our other article about this?
Click here to read one of our most popular past posts on Fixed Schedule Productivity.
Leadership Lessons
Three Rarely Talked About Attributes of a True Leader
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It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a T-ball coach. Life presents us with leadership opportunities. I have been in education for 15 years. I’ve been a head coach for football, basketball, and track. However, the one role that has taught me the most about leadership is being a father of six. Fatherhood has taught me three important lessons on what it means to be a true leader.
The most important lesson about leadership is quality time.
(Tweet This)
People want to know they matter to you. Time is the greatest indicator of value we have to give. But what I’ve learned is that quality matters more than quantity.
At this moment I am a teacher and football coach. I spend two hours at home during the workweek that I can give to my family. I have more time on the weekends, but I have work responsibilities, too. There is no way I can give time to every child, every night. I don’t even try.
I DO make sure my children have my full attention – no cell phone. I make the conversation about what is going on in their life. Or with my younger kids, I let them choose the book to read before bed, and I make sure I tell them, in some form that I love them.
You might not want to start a staff meeting with the words, “I love you, guys.” But you can tell people they matter to your organization by turning off your phone before you engage in conversation. Ask questions about life outside the office. It is not easy to give time to everyone, but it is worth giving people quality time as a leader because people want to know they matter.
The next lesson is developing the right routine.
(Tweet This)
This lesson is not about steps that make things run smoothly. It is about connecting to the purpose of the routines we establish, whether it is having a monthly meeting or doing tackling stations every practice.
Here is an example; people are always amazed that our family is always on time. We have a morning routine that allows us to be on time. My wife and I get up an hour before our kids. We wake our kids with enough time for them to have breakfast and get ready for the day. When we have a rough morning, instead of yelling at the kids, we reinforce that we need to be on time. It doesn’t always make the morning easier, just that the kids do understand why, and we stay on schedule.
In leadership positions we create routines, but many times we don’t communicate to others why we are doing it. Sometimes we even create routines because others have done it that way. Spend a little time investigating the routines you have. Can you express why they are there? Are there things you want to improve? Implementing a new routine, with a clear understanding of why, will help in that area. One aspect of being a true leader is achieving outcomes; connect how you achieve those outcomes with the why.
The last lesson, and maybe the hardest, is to take care of yourself.
(Tweet This)
We all know we should eat right, exercise, and drink more water. This is hard to do in the simple busyness of life. Add a leadership role to the schedule, and now it seems to be impossible. But it has to be done.
This summer I went to see my doctor because I was just not feeling right. I knew it wasn’t the flu or allergies. It was a blood pressure reading of 165/120. Hypertension. Easily fixed with medication and improving my eating and exercise. This is where being a dad really made an impact. When I got home my little girls all wanted to know if I was OK. All I could think of was how I needed to be here in good health to see my kids grow up.
We can’t be great leaders if we are not at our best.
Being at our best means taking care of ourselves; especially for the people we have the honor of leading.
Performance & Productivity, Personal Development
Can You Sit Still For 180 Seconds? I Dare You.
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Your ability to focus and properly allocate your time is instrumental to any success that you hope to achieve. However the world, and specifically the internet, is not designed to help you focus. It is design to grab your attention with a compelling headline and suck you away from whatever you are working on to read some trivial piece of information that has nothing to do with your dreams, hopes and fears.
There is no special cure for managing your distractions. There is no special app, no browser plugin, and no list of “The Top 10 Ways To…” that the world can ever give you that will help you be less distraction.
Focus and concentration are a choice. Choose to focus and win the attention game
Or not
I dare you to watch this video for the next 180 seconds and do nothing else.
Do not pick up your phone. Do not move your mouse. Do not touch your keyboard. Use this as a simple exercise in concentration. Even I had a hard time doing it. But if you can do it, you’ll start to understand the kind of focus that you will need to get other things done.
Enjoy.
Performance & Productivity, Personal Development, Staying Healthy
The Simplest Success Tip You’ll Ever Read
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We love to overcomplicate success sometimes. But one of the most successful habits that has helped me over the years is so simple that people can’t believe it possibly works.
It comes down to one word: Movement.
Successful people don’t sit around much . They are always moving or standing or generating motion in some way. Movement has the magical quality of generating more movement and more energy. Whenever you sit down everything in your body wants to relax. Body parts want to fall asleep. When you stand and work your body has no choice but to pump more blood throughout your system to keep you upright. Sitting has always made me more sluggish – especially when I am already tired. But once I stand (like I am right now) my brain starts to go into overdrive with ideas. I’ve even learned that I can get a great Facebook or blog post out faster when I am standing. Whenever I visit spaces where people have to be highly creative, I’m seeing standing desks all over the place. And let’s not even get into the extra calories that you are burning when you are standing and generating even the smallest amount of movement.
Want more energy? More ideas? More momentum? More action? Try standing instead of sitting. You’ll be happily surprised with the results.
Attitude Adjustment
Forget motivation. This is what you REALLY need to succeed.
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One of the circles that I run in is that of professional speakers. It allows me to be around people that are much smarter than me. And that pushes my limits and makes me grow into a better speaker, a better person and a better business owner.
When I tell people about my amazing experience with Toastmasters and the National Speakers Association, there is one thing that I hear all of the time:
“Oh that is so cool. I’ve always wanted to be a motivational speaker!”
While I admire someone’s aspirations to motivate others, I also cringe a little at a new speaker entering the market with the primary goal of being a motivational speaker.
Why? Because motivation has become too easy. We are in a world that has a plethora of problems and quick solutions so we turn to “motivation” to make us feel better temporarily. We keep motivational sayings around us (I have five around me at my desk), and we seek out people who can make us feel better about bad situations.
The challenge with motivation is that it is always temporary. It does not actually help you achieve amazing success. Motivation wears off fast. And people are back to the reality that there are some things in their life that are just not pleasant.
How do we fix this ? I don’t know that I have all of the answers, but I can tell you that more than motivation…
People needs lessons on how to run their lives better
Motivation is easy. Work is hard. But too often you and I take the easy path towards success. We think if we just keep reading more motivation that success will just come.
Screw that. Stop seeking out more motivation.
Instead look to follow people that are giving you great lessons on how to accomplish the quantifiable things that you aspire to have and do during your time on this planet.
Want to be a millionaire ? Don’t follow someone that tells you that you can have a million dollars if you just work hard. Instead follow someone who is giving you step-by-step instructions on what it takes to make $100 a month, then $1,000, and then $10,000. Find someone who is great at teaching you things that you can easily replicate in your own life.
There is an interesting side effect once you start taking the steps from a great teacher. The journey with that teacher will automatically become motivating.
Remember: Less thinking and wishing. More doing and winning.
Your friend in success,
Patrick Allmond
Attitude Adjustment, Leadership Lessons, Staying Healthy
All Major Life Decisions Are Based On Love or Fear
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The title above was one of many gems that came out of this university commencement speech by Jim Carrey.
It is not uncommon to have celebrities speak at commencement ceremonies. This one was special and has some very deep words that you should listen to and put into practice in your own life.
What did you think? Come over to the Facebook Page and let me know what you took away.
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