Posted by john on September 26th, 2006 — Posted in How To Be More Motivated And Productive
“I’d like to get started, but I just don’t feel motivated.”
How often do you hear yourself saying that? It’s a dead end. Let me explain.
The startling truth about motivation is that you don’t get motivated to do something until after you’ve started doing it.
If you sit around waiting until you feel the fire inside you, you’ll just keep doing nothing. This is because, as Zig Ziglar has said,
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why I recommend both daily.
(Here is the source for that and other motivational quotes.)
That’s not all. There’s a logical problem with waiting till you’re motivated — it means you must want to do that thing more than anything else at the time.
As an example, let’s say you got a job in sales and your task is to call business prospects to see if they want to buy. When would you ever want to do that more than anything else? Never! It sucks to make those calls, especially if you’re not naturally outgoing!
And even if you did decide you wanted to do it more than anything else, you’d still need to make that exact same choice tomorrow. That’s a huge risk since you might decide you’d rather just sit around and play games on your computer that day.
So that is why to get started on a task, what you need is something other than motivation. What you need is a lack of choice. That gives you focus, when your only option is to do the thing you need to get done.
Eliminate all other possibilities. Make a rule for yourself that you cannot do anything or think about anything other than making those phone calls.
When you don’t have time to think about your other options, it becomes 100 times easier to get started on your task. You may think about how much you hate it, but at least you’ll do it!
(Of course, it’s much better have a positive attitude, but that will come in time, once you’ve developed a goal-oriented mindset.)
So remember: never sit around waiting until you feel inspired before starting something.
Action Questions:
1. What is your goal you want to accomplish? (The more specific the better. For instance you could want to make $100,000 this year.)
2. What are you willing to do to achieve your goal? (Again, be specific. If you’re a salesperson whose goal is to make a six figure income, don’t say “whatever it takes.” Instead say, “I’m willing to call as many clients as it takes to have one appointment set up for each day of the week.”
Once you’ve answered those two questions, and you’ve eliminated all other possibilities of things you can do, you’re ready to take action. And then once you’re actually doing it, you may just find yourself feeling motivated!
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Posted by john on September 23rd, 2006 — Posted in Uncategorized
I’d like to know what question has been burning in your mind about overcoming laziness. What brought you to this blog in the first place? You can either ask your question by posting it as a comment, or go to this page and you can ask it anonymously.
I’ll try to answer your question in a future blog post.
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Posted by john on September 21st, 2006 — Posted in Stop Procrastinating
“Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.”
- Jimmy Lyons, a successful jazz musician. Source: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~steel/procrastinus/quotes/quotes.html (There are other great procrastination quotes there as well.)
I used to be a terrible procrastinator who couldn’t get anything done. It felt like my life was out of control. I missed out on so many great opportunities, costing me untold amounts of money and lost career goals. (I spent almost all of my twenties unemployed.) I couldn’t ever just get started on anything, from exercise to housecleaning. And worst of all, I hated myself.
Then I stumbled onto the secrets of overcoming my procrastination, and started applying them, and it changed my life in a big way. I’ve gone from being stressed out (yes, idleness causes stress)… always doing things at the last minute (if I did them at all)… and doing low quality work —
– to burying my old limitations, and becoming a motivated person who charges full forces toward each goal — and doesn’t stop till my dream comes true. And if someone like me can do it, then you can do it too.
The first step in overcoming procrastination is to figure out what the repercussions are of procrastinating on something vs. the benefits of doing it. Take the time to think it through. As an example, suppose you’re out of shape, and you’ve been procrastinating on starting a weight lifting program.
You know that weightlifting has many benefits:
- It gives you good muscle tone, making you more attractive.
- It gives you more strength, so you can do common activities like carrying bags of groceries without straining or getting worn out.
- It improves your resting metabolism, so you literally burn fat while you sleep, which allows you to eat more and not gain weight.
Now that you’ve thought about the many benefits you’ll get from the thing you want to do, it’s time to consider the repercussions of NOT doing it.
With our example, if you procrastinate on weightlifting:
- You won’t have to put out the effort to pump the iron, BUT…
- Your metabolism will remain low, which harms your health.
- You’ll get more flabby and fat.
- You’ll be weak physically and have a low amount of energy.
So clearly in this case, the benefits of doing it outweigh the benefits of not doing it.
Another example: suppose you sell something on eBay, and someone wins the auction. You could put off packaging up the item and mailing it… but you know that the result will be an angry buyer who will demand a refund and give you a bad feedback score. That enflames you with a single-minded goal to get down to the post office ASAP.
Sometimes, however, the benefits of procrastinating are higher. For example, if you’ve got a looming deadline on a paper you need to write, then it’s better to put off vacuuming until tomorrow.
So if you’re procrastinating on something, you always need to ask yourself this:
What are the benefits of doing the task vs. the repercussions of not doing it?
If the repercussions aren’t that severe, and putting off the task frees you up to do something more important, then you should cross the task off your list for today.
But what if you’re procrastinating on something that truly needs to get done? I’ll answer that in the next post.
Action Step: Think of the task you’re currently putting off. Write it at the top of a piece of paper or a word processor document. Now write the benefits of doing the task, just as I did above in the example. Now write down the advantages of NOT doing the task, along with the disadvantages of not doing the task. When you think about the benefits of doing the tasks vs. not doing it, what makes more sense?
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