Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Procrastination

Seven Ways to Motivate Yourself

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Most people often know what they should do, but can’t seem to make themselves follow through. Here are seven quick and easy ways that might help you get motivated.

  1. Be decisive. Avoid analysis paralysis. The best way to get unstuck is to start somewhere. Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves. Focus on action, which will get you started and build momentum. You can adjust your course of action later. See my previous article: “When in Doubt, Do.”
  2. Avoid the desire to prove yourself. The need to prove yourself to others can be off-putting because you may foresee them disapproving of your work. Let go of the need to prove yourself to everyone else, and free yourself to accomplish what matters most to you. Overcome the fear of failure. Consider low-risk actions.
  3. Develop a Plan B. The most successful people are those who acknowledge when their current plans aren’t working and switch to Plan B.
  4. Accelerate. If things seem under control, you are probably not approaching your goal quickly enough.
  5. If you have made mistakes, don’t be shackled by regret. Things will eventually work out. If you are chained up by a worrisome activity and can’t seem to make progress, switch to another productive activity. Try my ’10-minute Dash’ technique to beat procrastination.
  6. Play favorite scenes in your mind. Envisioning triumph, moments with a loved one or images of playing with a pet have an incredible ability to inspire you.
  7. Try something new and befriend the unfamiliar. Break away from your comfort zone. You will only grow when you let go of discomfort, explore a different path, and try something new.

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Seek Discipline, Not Motivation: Focus on the WHY

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Motivation is glorified as a personal trait. While it is beneficial to be motivated, folks who actually manage to get things done are those who find a way to work at whatever they are interested in even when they do not really feel like doing it.

Discipline is Fixating on What You Want

“More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm,” the Buddha taught as per the Dhammapada.

Seek Discipline, Not Motivation Whatever form of personal character it takes—self-control, dedication, endurance, persistence, resolve, willpower, or self-regulation,—discipline is one of the biggest differentiators between successful and unsuccessful people.

The British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote in “On Education” (1926,) “Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.” Discipline is the conscious ability to prevail over distractions, avoid opportunities for gratification, regulate your emotions and actions, overrule impulses, and exert mindful self-control to fulfill your immediate goals and aspirations.

A Simple Hack to Develop Discipline: Focus on the WHY

Many of the goals you strive for—like losing weight—require you to choose between a smaller but immediate reward and a larger but remote reward. For instance, if you are dieting and are presented with a cake, you face a choice between the immediate indulgence of eating the cake and the more distant incentive of losing weight. Renouncing immediate pleasure in order to reap future benefits can pose an enormous challenge.

Research by Dr. Kentaro Fujita of Ohio State University shows that participants who considered why they had to do something were better able to inhibit their impulses when presented with immediate temptations. They also exerted greater self-control and stuck with a task longer than those who thought just about how they could do something. For example, Fujita’s research suggests that if you focus on your ultimate goal of losing weight, you are more likely to reinforce your dieting discipline. You are more likely, then, to indulge in a slice or two of pizza and avoid eating the entire pizza than if you would just try to fill up on salad and avoid eating the pizza altogether. This complements my “cut back, do not cut out” tip for dieting success based on how abrupt deprivation from pleasures often results in guilt and over-indulgence.

Idea for Impact: Focus on the ends rather than the means. To build up discipline and self-regulation, keep your goal itself at the front and center of your concentration instead of focusing on how to reach it.

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Overwhelmed with Things To Do? Accelerate, Maintain, or Terminate.

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If you are overwhelmed by extensive demands on your time or by the number of projects that seem permanently stuck on your to-do list, here’s a technique to organize your projects more effectively.

Make a table with three columns: “Accelerate Mode,” “Maintain Mode,” and “Terminate Mode” and classify your projects.

  • “Accelerate mode” projects have the potential for significant benefits and therefore will need additional investment in time, effort, and resources.
  • Projects that you can sustain at the present pace and projects where additional investments may not necessarily translate to larger payoffs go in the “maintain mode.”
  • Choose the “terminate mode” whenever in doubt, especially for projects that have been lingering in the “someday I will get to” and “maybe” categories. Also, terminate those projects that are on your list because you feel that you should do but need not.

One of the key characteristics of successful people is to recognize and invest their resources in projects that really matter and to do everything else adequately enough.

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When in Doubt, Do

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One of the most insidious obstacles to achievement is our tendency to give in to the pessimistic voices in our heads that advocate caution and forethought before making decisions. Instead of accepting failure as an inherent possibility in any undertaking, we tend to espouse inaction in order to weigh every fact against possible outcomes. We are thus predisposed to devising excuses for our indolence.

Admittedly, further deliberation is justified in some cases, but with a vast majority of our decisions, we tend to overestimate the stress we might experience after making a difficult choice. The longer we spend on making a decision, the less productive we are. Beyond a reasonable amount, obsessing over choices causes analysis paralysis, as in the fable of the fox and the cat.

Idea for Impact: No good comes from hesitation and inaction. The only things you will regret in the future are the things you don’t do today. So, instead of dragging it out, act decidedly on an opportunity before it ceases to be one. Take a few low-risk steps and watch your confidence grow. The consequences are likely to be far less extreme than the cost of comfortable inaction.

Follow the “10-Minute Dash” technique to get a task going and overcome procrastination.

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Overcome Procrastination: My “10-Minute Dash” Technique to Get a Task Going

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“He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.”
– Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

Procrastination: “Why do now what I can do later“

Simply, procrastination is a choice to delay an action with the intent to act later.

Most of us are prone to procrastination on tasks big and small. Some of our postponement-problems are instigated by fears of incompletion and failure, or, from assuming that the tasks we face are tedious. Often, our procrastination is nothing more than resentment to working on tasks assigned by others.

The “10-Minute Dash” Technique

The next time you face a ‘job’ that appears overwhelming or unpleasant, beat the temptation to postpone action by committing to work on the job for just ten minutes. Follow these four simple steps.

  • Consider the ‘job‘ at hand and break it down. Pick two or three simple component-‘tasks‘. For instance, if you want to clean your study room, your component tasks could be to clean the bookshelf, organize the study-desk, etc.
  • Commit to focus on your chosen tasks for just ten minutes. Use a timer, if necessary. For ten minutes, do nothing but your chosen tasks.
  • Avoid distractions or interruptions. For instance, if you unearth Aunt Stella’s letter while cleaning a bookshelf, continue to clean–you can read her letter later.
  • Do not give up. Two minutes into the ten-minute dash, if you find your chosen task tedious, do not stop. After all, you have just eight more minutes to go.

Beginning a Task Builds Momentum

There are two distinct outcomes of doing a ten-minute dash.

  • Often, at the end of ten minutes of uninterrupted work, you feel good about working towards your goal. It is likely that beginning to work on the job built a momentum; you got absorbed in the tasks. In contrast to your presumption, the job may turn out to be rather easy and pleasant. Continue to work—schedule ten, twenty or thirty more minutes of work.
  • The less likely outcome is that the ten minutes of work reinforced some of your displeasures about the job. Still, your achievement was that, at the very least, you got ten minutes of work done. If you do not wish to continue working on the task, commit to resume your work later. Ask yourself, “When can I start again?”

Concluding Thoughts

One of the easiest techniques to overcoming procrastination is to begin. Quite often, seemingly difficult tasks get easier once you get working on them. In short time, you get into the ‘flow’ and work towards completion.

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General Electric’s Jack Welch on Acting Quickly

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General Electric's Jack Welch on Acting Quickly

Jack Welch was the Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) from 1981 to 2001. During Welch’s twenty-year tenure, GE grew into one of the largest and most admired companies in the world. Jack Welch is widely recognized as one of the greatest business leaders of our time. In 1999, Fortune magazine named him the ‘Manager of the Century.’

In an interview with Spencer Stuart executive headhunters Thomas Neff and James Citrin for the book “Lessons from the Top”, Jack Welch regrets not taking action quickly during his tenure at General Electric.

I think the biggest mistake I made is a fundamental one. I went too slow in everything I did. … If I had done in two years what took five, we would have been ahead of the curve even more.

You rarely do things too fast. If you think about your life and the decisions you’ve made, you can’t come up with too many where you said, “I wish I took another year to do it.” But you can sure come up with a list where you say, “I wish I had done a bunch of things six months earlier.”

Call for Action

Procrastinators sabotage themselves. However, procrastination is a learned behavior and therefore can be unlearned.

In all spheres of life, competition has transitioned from “big-eat-small” to “fast-eat-slow.” Good ideas are relatively easy to come up with. However, quick and efficient execution is primary to the success of these ideas. When a hundred people probably have the same idea, execution in a fast timeframe is just about the only thing that matters.

Are you holding back on your ideas? Do the tasks look daunting? Do you lack confidence? Are you uncertain of the direction or afraid of failure? How can you overcome these hesitations? Develop a set of ideas to reach your goals, prioritize them, and commence working on your ideas right away. Why delay?

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