Category Archives: Habits

Discover How to Stop Procrastinating *Permanently* in Just 21 Days or Less and Finally Become the Productive Person You’ve Always Wanted To Be!

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One of the most common problems is procrastination. We know what we want to do and should do but still we end up spending hours upon hours doing “easier” work or escaping via TV, blogs or music.

Now, nothing wrong with a little escape from time to time but if you procrastinate too much you will not get the most important things done and you will also send yourself into negative spirals where your self-esteem plummets and you spend your days in a vague negative malaise.

So what can you do? Here are 7 timeless tips to help you to stop procrastinating and start living your life more fully.

1. Stop thinking. Start doing.

“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
Eva Young

A bit of planning can certainly help you to achieve what you want to achieve. A lot of planning and thinking tends to have the opposite effect.

You think and think and try to come up with “the perfect plan”. A plan where you don’t have to make mistakes, where you will never be rejected, where there will be no pain or difficulties. Such a thing does of course not exist. As long as you work on that plan you can protect yourself.

2. Don’t blow a task out of proportion.

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
Olin Miller

”Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”
George Claude Lorimer

By over thinking and putting things off you are not only trying to protect yourself from pain. You also make mountains out of molehills. The quotes above are so true it isn’t even funny. The more hours and days you put something off the worse it grows in your mind.

By simply dwelling on it, so it expands in your mind and since you are putting it off you are probably thinking about it in a negative way. This makes a little thing a big Godzilla, a horrible beast that is threatening to ruin your life.

So plan a little and then take action.

Often you don’t even have to plan, you have been there before and you know what needs to be done. So stop thinking and just do it no matter how you feel and what you think. How you feel right now changes as quickly as the weather so it’s not the perfect guidance system. You don’t have to obey what it says (it’s not chains made of iron). You can just do what you know is right anyway.

3. Just take the first step.

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem close to impossible. So you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment.

Then you just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change you mental state from resistant to “hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it. So you can take the next step and the next one after that.

The thing is, you can’t see the whole staircase anyway and it will shift and reveal itself along the way. That’s why the best of plans tend to fall apart at least a bit as you start to put it into action. You discover that your map of reality doesn’t look like reality.

4. Start with the hardest task of your day.

“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
Dale Carnegie

Maybe you have an important call to make that you also fear might be uncomfortable. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages of your paper to finish.

Whatever it may be, get it out of your way the first thing you do.

If you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day – and your to-do list – tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes.

5. Just make a decision. Any decision.

“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
Theodore Roosevelt

We feel bad when we sit on our hands and don’t take action because it’s unnatural. The natural thing is to be a decisive human and take action.

When you procrastinate you want to do something but you don’t take the action that is in alignment with that thought. You become conflicted within.

What you do always sends signals back to you about who you are. Sure, doing affirmations where you say to yourself that you are confident can help you but taking the confident actions you want to take over and over again is what really builds your self confidence and a self-image of you being a confident person. When you procrastinate you lower your self esteem and that too sends signals back to yourself that you are an indecisive person.

6. Face your fear.

“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now, since success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy.”
Denis Waitley

I think this is true. It’s easier to live on that “someday…” thought. It’s harder to just take action. To risk looking like a fool. To make mistakes, stumble and not avoid that pain. To take responsibility for your own life. The easier choice can come with a sense of comfort, with a certain level of success, pangs of regret for all the things you never dared to do and a vague sense of being unfulfilled. You wonder about what would have happened if you had taken more action and more chances.

The harder choice gives you, well, who knows? It will at least certainly make your feel more alive.

7. Finish it.

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”
William James

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
David Allen

Not taking the first step to start accomplishing something can make you feel bad but not finishing what you have started can also leave you with negative vibes. You feel fatigued or stressed and sometimes you don’t even know why. It is much like someone has zapped your inner power.

If that is the case, go over tasks and projects that you are currently involved in. Is there something there you know you want to finish but haven’t yet? Try to get that finished as soon as you can, you will start to feel a whole lot better.

Just be careful. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea but there is no law that says that everything has to be completed.

For a more instructional approach to guide you through to productivity click here.

Six Ways to Stop Smoking

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While there is no easy way to stop smoking, the following methods will help you beat your nicotine addiction. Many people like you think they should quit smoking cigarettes but find it too difficult. The reason for this is because there is a physiological basis of nicotine addictions (physical) as well as a psychological basis of nicotine addiction.

Following is a list of the easiest ways to stop smoking. Use one or more of these methods to cure your nicotine addiction.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy
Nicotine replacement therapy consists of products such as nicotine patches, gum, inhalers and nasal sprays. These stop smoking aids deliver a dose of nicotine with the aim of helping you gradually kick the habit of smoking while you progressively use less nicotine. While using nicotine replacement therapy is an easy way to stop smoking cigarettes, it is common to form an addiction to the nicotine substitute so you have to be careful while using them.

Prescription Stop Smoking Drugs
Often referred to “stop smoking drugs”, these prescription medications are designed to reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Stop smoking drugs such as Chantix and Zyban work to “undo” the part of your brain that has become rewired by nicotine. While this sounds great, quitting is not guaranteed. In a recent study only 44% participants quit while using Chantix as opposed to 30% who quit by using Zyban. Learn more about the benefits, costs, and side effects of stop smoking drugs.

Herbal Stop Smoking Products
Herbal stop smoking products offer an all natural alternative to nicotine replacement therapy and prescription stop smoking drugs. Some herbs create an effect on the brain that is similar to nicotine but are non-addictive, while other stop smoking herbs help the body to deal with the other symptoms of quitting, such as irritability and the “quitters flu”.

Cutting Down Gradually
Another way to stop smoking is by gradually lowering the amount of cigarettes smoked each day – for example cut down from 10 to 7 cigarettes a day or less. You can also delay having a cigarette after a meal or when ever else you feel like smoking. One very important thing to do is make certain that your final quit date is no more than two weeks after your start.

Stop Smoking Plan
While a few lucky smokers can quit smoking cigarettes by going cold turkey, most people require a more complicated way to stop smoking. A solid stop smoking plan will include a quit date, the help of your family and friends, the understanding of the challenges that you will face on that date and beyond, getting rid of all tobacco related items from your home, car, and work place, and speaking to a doctor about treatment for nicotine addiction.

Other Ways to Stop Smoking
There are several other ways to stop smoking that don’t involve nicotine replacement therapy or prescribed medication. These include hypnosis, acupuncture, behavioral therapy, and nicotine vaccination.

Finding the easiest ways to stop smoking can be a personal choice. You may react differently to these methods than someone else. Do your research and you may find the answer that solves your nicotine addiction. A good program can be found here.

Learning More…Studying Less

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It is often overlooked that the way we learn can make a significant difference to how quick we progress with learning. Whenever the subject of why some people learn faster comes up there are a whole host of common answers:

  1. Some people are just naturally smart. (Often implying you can’t improve)
  2. Everyone is “smart” in their own way. (Nonsense, research indicates different “intelligences” often correlate)
  3. IQ is all in the genes. (Except IQ changes with age and IQ tests can be studied for, like any other test)

There may be some truth to these claims but it doesn’t mean that average learners are doomed to mediocrity. There are many people who went from middle to spectacular students after changing their learning habits and finding motivation.

Here are some tactics to learn faster, retain information better or just enjoy the process of learning more:

Genius (or Crazy?)#1 – Pegging (or How Mental Magicians can Perfectly Recall Hundreds of Numbers)

One of the learning tactics, that is rarely mentioned, is pegging. This is a great tool for remembering numbers, provided you practice it.

The systems typically work with a special cheat sheet. This is a list of the digits 0-9 which each correspond to the sound of a consonant. All you need to do is memorize the corresponding consonant and digit match (e.g. 0 = t, 1 = s, 2 = k, 3 = r, etc.)

From there, you can translate any series of numbers into a series of letters. Now all you need to do is make groups of letters into nouns by adding vowels between the consonants. So 201 becomes, k-t-s, which can become “kites”, for example.

Then, once you have your string of nouns, you just need to create a story that combines each of the nouns in a sequence. To translate them back you only need to remember the story and decompose the objects back into their original digits.

#2 – Metaphor (Juliet is the sun… or is she a chemical formula?)

Here’s a quick way to separate the rapid learners from the average learners. Ask them to give you an analogy for whatever they are learning. The rapid learners probably have already thought of at least one analogy, application or metaphor. Slower learners usually are baffled by the question.

Linking ideas allows you to retain them longer and understand them better. Shakespeare isn’t the only one who should be making connections between ideas.

#3 – Total Immersion (Or How a Guy Can Become Fluent in 8 Languages)

Benny Lewis became fluent in eight languages in under a decade. More, his current goal is to become fluent in a new language in under 3 months. When asked how he achieved this his answer was straightforward: “I stop speaking English. I do everything in the language I want to learn.”

When you’re totally immersed in a subject (or language), even if you’re lost, you’ll learn far faster than everyone who just dabbles.

#4 – Visceralization (What does a derivative look like?)

When we were kids, we played with crayons and drew pictures of fantastic things that never existed outside our imagination. What happened?

Now most of us feel embarrassed if we try to imagine anything exciting or creative with what we learn. This is, I believe, a key reason many people struggle scholastically. They try to memorize exactly the way they were taught, instead of visualizing the material in an inventive way.

When a student recently had to take a test on international labour law, a key topic was the International Labor Organization. Rather than memorize facts, they drew a picture of a creature which had three heads for each of the sections of the ILO, one with 4 mouths for each of the different delegates. In all, they managed to incorporate a page of notes into one picture.

Learning only needs to be boring because you make it that way.

#5 – Linking (Or How to Remember a Grocery List Without the Paper)

Like pegging, linking is another trick mental magicians use. The idea here is that you form a chain, linking each item in a sequence to the next item. You form these links by imagining bizarre and surreal pictures which combine the two elements.

For a simple list like Milk -> Honey -> Apples, you would need to form a link between milk and honey, which you could imagine a giant cow that had bees which came from its udders instead of milk. For the honey and apples, you could imagine an giant apple beehive swarming with tiny apple seeds.

Like pegging this technique can go far beyond the scope of this article. It is commonly used successfully to remember lists of abstract principles that need to be memorized in a sequence for tests.

#6 – The 5-Year Old Method (Try explaining quantum physics to a first grader)

Most rapid learners know how to simplify an explanation. Obviously, actually explaining your masters thesis to a first grader might be impossible but the goal is to reduce the complexity, by explaining, breaking down and using analogies, so that someone far below your current academic level could understand it.

If you can teach an idea, you can learn that idea.

#7 – Ambiance Catalysts (Or How Drinking a Pint Can Improve Your Studying)

Cal Newport, wrote about the importance of context when studying. If you lock yourself away in a library to get work done, no wonder you’re going to hate it. If the ambiance is appealing, it can push you to get working.

He suggests even going to a quiet bar with your reading material and ordering a beer.How’s that for a more inviting study setting?

#8 – Diagrams (Who said doodling in class was wrong?)

It turns out doodlers perform better in mental retention tests than non-doodlers. It would be fair to say that if the drawings you create in a class are related to the course material, you would probably learn even better.

#9 – Speed Reading (Or How to Read 70 Books in a Year)

Speed reading is less about speed and more about control. Just as racecar driving is more about controlling speed for tight turns, rather than just hitting the accelerator.

If you want to speed read, the basics are:

  • Use your finger as a pointer to underline the text as you read it. This reduces the impact of saccades and distractions in slowing your reading time.
  • Practice reading books faster than you can comprehend, by moving your finger faster. This “practice skimming” helps you improve your comprehension at higher reading rates.
  • Stop subvocalizing. Practice reading faster than you can say the words aloud in your head. Subvocalization can help at slower speeds, but if you require it to read, your top speed will be reduced.

For a deeper instruction Click here.