From: Roy Ripper (edited)
Successful people don't do what other people tell them to. So don't set goals to please other people. Do what works for you.
Set goals that help you feel great about yourself. 6 month goals are too far away. 90 day goals are better. The closer finish line makes your current actions seem more significant.
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From: Brad Feld (edited)
I remember reading a book that said a great consultant spent 20% of their time on “overhead” and 80% of their time on substantive work for their clients.
As long as I was only spending 20% of my time on things I wasn’t interested in, I was fine.
However, I’d somehow gotten the ratios flipped – I was spending only 20% of my time on the stimulating stuff and 80% of my time on stuff I viewed as unimportant.
I was only stimulated by about 20% of the stuff I was doing. This led to a deep boredom that I didn’t realize, because I was so incredibly busy and tired from the amount of stuff I was doing.
While the 20/80 problem was the start, the real root cause of the depression was the boredom.
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Happy people feel in control of their lives.
To feel in control of your life you have to be in control of your time.
To master your use of time, set goals and break them into small daily aims.
Don't overestimate how much you can accomplish. This will make you frustrated.
If you progress slowly but steadily you will achieve more than you thought you could.
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From: Greg Ciotti (edited)
1. Russian psychologist Bluma "Zeigarnik Effect" Zeigarnik says: we are better at remembering things that are partially done.
She had people do puzzles then interrupted them.
Then they were asked them to recall the tasks that they were in the process of doing or had completed.
Participants recalled more detail about the tasks that had been interrupted than completed.
2. In a study by Kenneth McGraw, people were given a tricky puzzle to solve.
When the participants were interrupted and told that the study was over 90% continued working.
3. Both Zeigarnik and McGraw show us, then, that when people start something they think about it and are motivated to finish.
So you if you just start something, your brain will give you a little automatic help to continue.
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Source: http://joshuaearl.com/table-flips-and-karate-punches/ - Josh Earle (edited)
Every programmer knows that trying to bend a computer to your will is often extremely frustrating.
I was venting to my buddies, John and Derick, and John immediately spotted my problem: “Slow down. Stop rushing.”
He was right. I believed that I should already be done with whatever I was working on.
My kids have a little block set with different shaped holes in the lid. When they were learning to use this toy, they’d try to put the star block in the triangular hole and when it didn’t fit they’d start pounding the lid and howling at the toy. That was me.
After thinking about what John said, I made an effort to approach my work differently. I picked one task and decided to work on it patiently whether it took me five minutes or five hours. I ignored the other items on my to-do list.
This task end up taking half the day to complete. Earlier in the week I would have gone nuts but after working through it systematically, I was in a positive frame of mind and simply ready to tackle the next thing on my list. I was able to knock it out in half the time I’d planned.
In karate class, there was a saying: “Whatever you seek, you’re least likely to find.” In other words, if you try too hard to throw a really fast punch, your body tenses up and you slow down. That applies to more than just punches.
NOTE; Here's why you slow down when you think you have to go fast. You think something bad is going to happen if you don't get what you want so you freeze with fear. In sports, it's called a choke.
See also:
Why do people choke under pressure.
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“Instead of storing items in multiple folders named after people or topics, I created one folder for all saved email,” he says.
“People who have several email folders spend a lot of their time figuring out where they saved a message in the past or where they should save a new message that’s just popped up.
One ‘Saved’ folder solves that problem, achieves the goal of archiving that message, and lets me move on to more important tasks.”
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From: Evan DeFilippis on Quora (edited)
In the past, if you asked me when I woke up in the morning what things would make me happy that day, I would tell you: being with my family, eating good food, having rewarding conversations with friends, learning interesting things, going on adventures and so on. But if you asked me at the end of the day how I spent my free time and I would tell you: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, responding to angry internet comments.
Whenever I would come home from a long day at work or school, I would be so tired the only things I could find the energy to do were mindless. Somehow I would find hours of time for television, Netflix, Reddit or Facebook,
Finally, though, I replaced this nightmarish routine with the twenty minute rule. The moment I get home, I force myself to do at least twenty minutes of one of the following: write an article, read a book, practice chess, learn another language with DuoLingo, practice guitar, meditate, work on a computer programming language or improve flexibility with stretching.
Once you get passed that twenty minute commitment, you will find that you have the energy to keep going. If you don't continue past twenty minutes or don't even start the twenty minutes, it's better to go to sleep than waste your time.
So, here are the keys to progress:
1. When people don't plan, they play Angrybirds and watch Netflix because it takes less energy than figuring out something to do. This is the path of least resistance. We need to build habits that make it difficult and one way to do this is the twenty minutes rule.
When we want to do something that we know will enrich our lives, like writing a book or learning a language, we say "I'll get around to it." We don't commit the twenty minutes a day necessary to become the person we really want to be. And so we need to challenge the impulse to relegate our ambitions and passions to something our future self will do.
2. Recognize that any forward movement is worthwhile.
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From: Gregory Ciotti, The Psychology of Getting More Done (in Less Time) (edited)
Why We Procrastinate
When we look at a big project we focus the hardest parts. This makes us see disaster ahead and we feel repelled by it.
Just Start Anyway
The best way to get over this bad feeling is to simply start anyway. Once started, we have a natural desire to continue a task so once you get going you will automatically keep going at least for a while.
Willpower
But how do you see it all the way through? Willpower won't do it. It's a limited resource that can be used up. So what do successful people do?
Schedule Breaks
When Anders Ericsson studied top violinists he found that when they practice they actually focus on the hard parts. So how do they maintain their commitment to hard work? They schedule breaks in the practice session.
If the brain knows that a break is coming it won't it won't be so afraid of hard work that it can't sustain. These fiddlers work 90 minutes and then break for 15. Apparently, this matches the natural requirements of your body.
Tim Ferris, however, favours the Pomodoro Technique which recommends 25 minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of rest. Then, after 4 work sessions you take 15-30 minutes of rest.
Deadlines
Deadlines also help you get work done. When drug addicts had to submit an essay on time those who wrote down when and where they would complete the essay were 90% more likely to do so. Students who set dates on their assignments also do better than those who don't.
Track Your Work
Apparently, people who make ongoing notes about their progress toward a goal do better than those who don't. Tracking progress improves performance because you become very aware when you are doing very little or wasting time. You can track your work on an Accountability Chart.
Create two-columns.
Column 1: lists the time-span of your work sessions.
Column 2: lists the tasks you completed during the session.
Don’t create any columns for your breaks.
Planning At Night
Selecting up to five priority tasks for the next day is better done at night than planning in the morning because when you are in a rush to get to work you'll easily cast it aside.
Segmenting
Since we shy away from big projects, it makes sense to split them into smaller segments. Instead of listing “Work on research project” as a daily goal, you only target parts of the research process like "finishing the introduction".
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From: Laura Montini on Laughable Goals (edited)
How do you reach a goal? "Make it so easy that you can't say no." (Leo Barbuta). "It should be so simple that it's laughable." (Tiago Forte)
Say your goal is to become well-read on industry news. Read two articles everyday. That's a good plan but lots of people find it too good to be true.
They can't believe that something so manageable is going to get them anywhere so they pledge to read an hour every night which is something they won't do.
Forte wanted to be able to do pushups. On day one, he and did one pushup. On day two, he did two. Two months later, he's up to 50 a day.
Do the most painless version of your goal. Even a tiny step creates momentum. Your brain wants to do the next step automatically.
Comment: This is a big issue. Small actions seem to be taking you nowhere even though the tiniest bit of imagination tells you that they will.
See also:
Procrastination Tips
Focus on Process Not Results
Do Bad Plans Cause Procrastination
Rigid Rules For Productivity
The Virtue of Short Term Goals
How To Succeed Without Willpower
20 Minute Rule for Productivity
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From: zenhabits: Tim Ferriss on Procrastination (edited)
1. What have you been doing lately to beat procrastination?
I wake up and immediately work on writing without Internet or e-mail from 9-12.
I batch my phone calls.
2. What's the biggest reason people have a hard time starting an important task.
The biggest problem is that people bite off too much. Make your quota low so you can succeed each day.
One hugely successful ghost writer (50+ books, including NYT bestsellers) told me his secret to success: just two crappy pages per day. That’s all he had to write to win for the day.
For decades IBM salespeople sold the most because they had the lowest quotas and therefore weren’t intimidated to pick up the phone.
Start small. The Pomodoro technique asks you to commit to just 20 minutes. That helps overcome inertia.
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