It’s the job that’s never started that takes longest to finish.
J.R.R. Tolkien
/phil
Start and finish
Reply
Tag Archives: Tasks
The long run
A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.
Jim Watkins
/phil
Turn your life around!
One of the best places to start to turn your life around is by doing whatever appears on your mental I should list.
Jim Rohn
/phil
Make choices or they will be made for you! The discipline post
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else.
Hunter S. Thompson
Feeling indecisive today? Start making decisions and get better at it.
One important step is to not stay in your head for too long. If you find yourself caught up in there, thinking about a million possible outcomes and opportunities and whatnot, just get out! Busy yourself, go for a walk, get up for a run or just do some chores that are due.
You do not want to get stuck in your head, thinking about your life and your decisions, you rather want to make those decisions! Making decisions has a lot to do with discipline because often times a decision is feared because the consequences will result in work. Discipline and the 3 second rule may help you with that.
The 3 second rule or as I like to call it the “No hestitation rule” states not to even begin thinking about certain tasks. Take for example getting up in the morning. Your alarm clock rings and what is the first thing that you would normally do? You would go up into your head and search for excuses to sleep in. You would do the math, think about how long you can possibly sleep today, set a new alarm and fall asleep. But there was a reason for the early alarm in the first place and you have to be strong now to be happy later.
So instead of allowing yourself that excuse-time, you just get up, before you can start thinking. You get up and start your day, maybe eat something, maybe work out, maybe take a shower, whatever it is that you do in the morning. This will become your routine, your credo. Once the alarm goes off, your day has started, no matter what else. This way it will become easier over time, because you will get used to it. Our minds and bodies love being used to something, they hate change. Get used to this discipline of trusting your former self.
Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do, when you don’t want to do it.
You have set yourself the goal of learning at 2pm today? Well, it’s 2:01, so get started! No excuses, no procrastination, just get started. Same with chores that don’t take a lot of time.
Take the following situation: You have some spare time, sit around, surf the web. Suddenly your look wanders through the room and it dawns on you: Jesus, I should really vacuum in here.
Normal, slobby outcome: “Well yeah, I’ll do that some time soon”
Ideal outcome: Just get up and do it. It will take 5, maybe 10 minutes (that you would have spend looking at cats anyway) and afterwards you’ll feel awesome. Yes, even vacuuming your room can feel awesome, because it is applied discipline and it makes you feel being actually in control of your life.
These small things, like doing chores right when they pop up or bigger things, like getting up at certain (maybe brutal) hours are things that don’t work perfectly tommorow if they did not work today at all. You have to train them over time and you have to be patient.
Be willing to fail and do not judge yourself. The only possible mistake is to give up after a short time, because you did not show the discipline at several occasions. That is even a greater reason to keep up the training.
Discipline is like a muscle (and a big one, trust me!), it has to be trained continuously! Even if you have aquired a certain level of discipline, you can’t stop. You have to maintain your discipline muscle like any other one. Start small, start today, never stop! Train your discipline, like you train your body. If you do not train your body: Also start today! Maintaining mental and physical health is extremely important and feels awesome!
Practice and enjoy!
/phil
How to build up self esteem
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Ever found yourself lacking self-esteem or having trouble doing certain tasks that you felt you should be able to do?
I have a cure for that. Challenge yourself! Chose any given task that is a personal challenge, may it be going to the club alone, talking to strangers, building something, jumping out of a plane, whatever it is that you are scared of.
Take this task/challenge and go for it! Embrace your fear, embrace your uncomfortable feeling! You will push through, you will suceed and finally you will feel great, comfortable, full of self-esteem and courage.
Every once in a while you have to achieve tasks, you have to prove to yourself: I can do it! If your job or your hobbies don’t give you this good feeling of having achieved something than you have to add it to your life in other ways.
This is for example why video games or games in general are so popular. Achieving stuff, no matter how small, lets us grow as persons. We show ourselves and others: I still got it, I can learn to do something that I was not able to do before, I am awesome!
I dare you. I double-dare you! Go out and prove to yourself that you are in fact awesome!
/phil
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Keep busy!
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein
I think this quote was already posted some time ago and I did doubted its origin back then. I still do. Nontheless this quote is awesome!
You see sometimes there is this point where you don’t do much. You sleep a lot, still feel tired often, don’t have the energy to get even small things done and you just don’t feel good.
What you need is being busy! Do stuff, cram you days full with exciting things to do. Then chores like cleaning or cooking just happen alongside without you even noticing the work you put into them.
As long as you always have something to do and always something interesting to do, you will feel way more energetic than when you have 100% free time. Free time does not equal “Free” time.
/phil
About getting Motivation back
Whenever you are working on a task, may it be your homework or your lifetime dream,
and you come to that point when your motivation drops away. There are two ways to get your motivation back on track. First you can focus on the part you already achieved. Second you can focus on you goal and imagine how great you’ll feel once you’ve reached it. But these two strategies don’t always work same as good.
So… when you haven’t even finished the first half of you task it is much more motivating to focus on the progress you already made instead of the far away goal. But when you work on and your goal and it comes in sight its better to focus on the approaching sucess. Mind this and get yourself motivated again…
/robin
Why postpone?
You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.
Les Brown
It is such an awesome feeling to have something to do and to acomplish something. Just set yourself some nice goals and go for it, nothing beats the fun you’ll get out of that!
/phil
Focus!
Person who chases two rabbits catches neither.
Confucius
Sometimes you have to get your priorities straight!
While multitasking is a good thing in general it is not a general cure for problems. Some tasks just require massive action that you just can not bring up while fulfilling other tasks. Therefore sometimes if you really want something you have to make sacrifices and set your priorities.
It is worth it.
/phil
It is about getting things done
The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.
Napoleon Hill
When someone gives you an important task and you want to impress this certain somebody then remember to GET IT DONE!
If course it seems reasonable to come back with a good excuse and he will most likely not judge you if you have good reasons, but what is more important is that the person remembers giving you a task and you being unable to complete it.
No matter how good the reason, the next time he will think of someone to complete an important task he will not think like
“Who could get it done if there were no obstacles”
but rather
“Who gets my shit done without coming back to me before he is finished with a task”.
You may be lucky enough that there is not such a person and you as the second choice will still be the man to do the job but would it not be better to be the first choice to begin with?
Of course it would be. And that is why you get your shit done! If someone gives you a task and you want to help him out, you get it done.
By the way, this is one of the very idealistic posts, don’t take it literally. There are perfect reasons for coming back to a person without having fullfilled their tasks but this is a general idea of how work should function and how delegation of work should apply.
/phil
Motivatingdaily - Your source for daily motivation 