Stop Learning and Start Doing

This may sound strange coming from me, but I must say that quitting has aided my success more than any other strategy. I actually had to go on a self-improvement fast. For a period of time, I would not allow myself to read, listen to, or watch anything new about time management until I implemented knowledge that I had already acquired.

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"quitting has aided my success"

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This was incredibly hard for me. Think about it, I've been a student of self-improvement, life management, time management, accelerated learning, and virtually any other type of self-discovery that you can imagine for my entire adult life. (When my adult life started is a point of contention for some, but let's just say that it's been more than a decade.) This was as challenging as giving up coffee would be (or so I'm guessing).

How Does It Feel?
I went through a week of withdrawals, but started the second week with a renewed intensity. This death of learning birthed new revelation. I discovered that the techniques I had been using were insufficient to get me to the next level. They were effective, efficient, and essential in achieving the level of success that I had acquired, but they were also holding me back.

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STOP for a moment and think: What's holding you back?

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By eliminating the distraction of learning new time management techniques (if I'm honest, I wasn't learning anything new just hearing the same message from different messengers).

What Was Holding Me Back?
By looking inward, I found the problem. I wasn't looking for the right knowledge. I wasn't asking the right questions. The questions I had been asking were, "how can I do this faster?" and "how can I get more done?" The real question for me is a simple one, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Taking a page out of Covey, I started at the end of my life and imagined what I wanted to accomplish and who would be there to share it with me. You know To Live, To Love, To Learn, and To Leave a Legacy.

So, give it a try, stop reading, listening to, and watching all time management techniques for a week, and discover the question that you haven't answered.

Most of our planners include a Goals section, and they goals are generally divided into six sections: Family, Intellectual, Social, Health, Economic, and Spiritual. Think about what you want to Be, Do, and Have in each of these areas and bring more CLARITY to your life today.

Overcome Procrastination Now

“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.” - Anonymous

Procrastination, or putting tasks off to the last possible second, is a major problem for many people. This causes undue stress, missed opportunities, unnecessary errors, frustration, and guilt - just to name a few issue. What are the root causes of procrastination and what can you do to overcome it?

Change Your Mind

One of the common causes of procrastination is wrong thinking. If you are thinking that you "have to" do something, you are already behind the curve. Since the desire for freedom is part of the human experience, people naturally resist activities that infringe upon that freedom. Thus, when you feel bound to do something, you want to put it off until the consequences of not doing it outweigh the feeling of bondage. The solution to "have to" is change your thinking to "want to", or at the very least "choose to". This simple change in thought will give you back the power. In turn, you will take away the discomfort of completing the task.

Another thought that will cause you to procrastinate is thinking that you must "finish it". If you are not procrastinating, you usually have the ability to work on projects over time. By thinking that you must finish something, you are putting tremendous pressure on yourself. If you change your thought to "start it", then you are giving yourself freedom to break the project down into bite-sized pieces. Often, you will change your approach during a project anyway as new information becomes available. It's much easier to change direction once your moving than it is to get the project moving forward.

It's Okay That You're Not Perfect

Perhaps the biggest cause of procrastination is perfectionism. There are many people who will not start something because they don't think they can do it well enough to meet their own impossible standards. Other perfectionists will put tremendous pressure on themselves and others to meet those impossible standards. Either way, this causes stress.

At the root of perfectionism is fear. It may be fear of failure or fear of rejection by others. To cast out this fear and overcome perfectionism, try love. If you love others and they love you, it's okay to be human and make mistakes. Let's face it, mistakes are part of life. You shouldn't set out to mistakes intentionally, but when you do, correct it and move forward. One of the most important people that you must love is yourself.

Break It Down

Regardless of the reason you're procrastinating, you will benefit by breaking your projects down into smaller pieces. Whenever possible, divide your tasks into the physical actions that must be done to bring your project to completion.

When you become aware of the reason that you are putting things off, change your thinking, and you'll change your life.