Brian's Motivational Blog » overcome procrastination

Procrastinator’s Creed

Brian — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:51:09 +0000

Ok today we gonna add a little humor for a change. This is something I got in my email called Procrastinator’s Creed.

You may wish to delay reading this until you have more free time.

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.

2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.

3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.

4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in propoartion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to recieve from missing them.

5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possiblity for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.

6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.

7. If at first I don’t succeed, there is always next year.

8. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.

9. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.

10. I will never put off tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.

Now I hope that these things do not describe you.

Procrastinator’s Creed is a post from: Brian’s Motivational Blog

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How to make the most of your priorities

Brian — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:50:52 +0000

Hi there. Today I will like to share with you the wisom of Ivy Lee. If you are a person who doesn’t really have a good system in place for getting things done then I am sure you will enjoy this post.

Charles Schwab was the chairman of the Bethlehem Steel and he was a very important man who did not really have a lot of free time cause he was very busy seeing about the affairs of the company.

Now one day a business consultant by the name of Ivy Lee came up to him and said that he had a plan that if Mr. Schwab used it, would greatly increase his productivity.

Now Mr. Schwab had heard of all the strategies to increase productivity before so he wasn’t going to be fooled by this man. However Ivy Lee made a proposition. He said that he will give him the strategy for him to use and then only after using the strategy he should pay him how much he thinks that strategy is worth.

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Now Charles did not have a problem with this since all the risk was on Mr. Lee’s part. Ivy Lee handed him the strategy and he used it in Bethlehem Steel. Several weeks later, Ivy Lee received a check for $25,000.

Now I am sure that right now you are probably wondering what it could be that could be worth so much money. Let us call it the success six.

This was what Ivy Lee handed him on paper

Write down 6 things you need to do tomorrow and number them 1 to 6.
Take that list and arrange it in order of importance
When you start the day begin the first task and don’t do any other task until you have finished the one above it.
Work on down the list and when the list is through prepare another list for the next day
Do this every day and after doing it share it with your people

Now that was the advice that Mr. Charles Schwab paid $25,000 for. Why not try it in your life? Why not try it and see if it helps you life in any way.

Thanks for reading this post and please feel free to leave your comments.

Here is another article that you may enjoy

The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished — Today I have a treat for you. Cal Newport from Study Hacks is going to share some of his insights on productivity. Cal is also the author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win at College. He is currently studying for a …

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The 1% principle to success

Brian — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:45:39 +0000

Hi there. I will like to share with you a principle to beating procrastination. I learnt this from my coach Mike Litman and in it he speaks about the 1% principle to success.

Now what do I mean by this 1% principle. I know that many of you have been procrastinating on something for weeks, months or probably years because we are focusing on taking massive monumental steps each day and these steps scare us to the point that we refuse to take action on it.

Some of us have some extremely long to do lists to do each day that we just start a lot of things and end up finishing nothing. So here is what this 1% principle is about.

Forget trying to do so much things and improving yourself monumentally each day. Stop trying to grow yourself by 50 percent or even 10 percent. Try to grow yourself by 1%. Now I am sure that you can do that.

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Have about 2 or 3 things to do in your to do list so that by the end of the day you can show that you have won. We need to get momentum in our lives and this is what the 1% principle can do for you.

If you’ve been procrastinating on reading a book, then why not read 1 or 2 pages per day. I am sure that you can do that. You need to get some momentum in your life and that is what the 1% principle will give you.

If you are like me and you want to memorize scripture verses from the bible, why not make a decision to learn just 1 verse per week and by the end of the year you will know 52 verses.

Do you see how this 1% principle works. Each day it compounds like compound interest.

So here’s what you need to do. Write down just 3 small things you are going to do tomorrow to move your life or business forward. Share it with us and celebrate when you have done these things.

Thanks for reading this post and have a great day!!!

The 1% principle to success is a post from: Brian’s Motivational Blog

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Time Management Techniques (Part 7 of 7)

Brian — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:39:30 +0000

Hello to all my blog readers. It’s been quite some time since I’ve made a post. Let me just say that I was sick coming to the end of last year and then I had some important church business to handle for the beginning of this year. I hope to be regularly posting now.

For this last part on time managment, I want to talk about change channels. I know that you are probably wondering if this has anything to do with a television. I assure you it has nothing to do with switching channels on a television. I learnt this concept from Mr. Eben Pagan

So what do I mean by changing channels? What is meant by this concept is that let’s just say you were doing something mentally for the last 50 minutes…probably you were doing a lot of research and reading a lot about some particular subject that really taxed your brain, it will be a wise idea to now change channels.

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This means that if you were doing something mental, then after you should do something physical or emotional etc. This is what is meant by changing channels e.g now that you have finished your research, you can now probably call up that friend who always makes you laugh and puts you in a good mood. This is a good way to relieve some stress from your last 50 minutes and helps you to be ready for the next task ahead which could be something physical like lifting weights.

You don’t want to spend all your day doing mental tasks cause it may end causing you to feel frustrated and you may decide not to do these important tasks.

So there you have it. 7 Time Management Techniques you can put in your life right now. What do you think of these techniques? Are they useful? Maybe you have some others that you may like to add. Please leave your comments and tell me what you think.

Have a great day!!!

Time Management Techniques (Part 7 of 7) is a post from: Brian’s Motivational Blog

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Time Management Techniques (Part 6 of 7)

Brian — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:11:41 +0000

Hi there. In this post I want to talk to you all about the concept of clean cuts.

Now you are probably wondering what do I mean by clean cuts. Is this a hair cut we are dealing with?

Off course not. When I say clean cuts, I mean that when you have finished working on one thing for a given period of time e.g 1 hour, then you need to cut it clean. You need to stop focusing on it afterwards. This is a great time management technique.

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For example, if you are working on an essay to hand in for school and you spent about 1 hour working on it and you finished it, you need to stop thinking about it afterwards. You need to move on to the next thing on your list without worrying about if the essay was good enough or if it was long enough because your mind can only focus on one thing at a time and you will cause the other thing you are working on to be done in a half hazard way because you will not be concentrating on the main task at hand.

This is something that may take a while to get used too, if you already have the habit of looking back at things that you just did to make sure they are perfect.

Clean cuts is a very good time management technique and Iwill like to hear your views on this topic. So feel free to leave a comment or share on your favorite social media site.

Thanks again and we’ll talk soon

Time Management Techniques (Part 6 of 7) is a post from: Brian’s Motivational Blog

Time Management Techniques (Part 5 of 7)

Brian — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:46:48 +0000

Hello people. I hope you all are enjoying this series on Time Management Techniques. In today’s post I want to talk about a concept called clean focus.

Now I am sure you are probably wondering what I mean by clean focus, so here is the answer.

Many times when we are doing something, we tend to lose our focus and stray a little. For e.g sometimes I may be reading a book or something and while reading the book, my mind begins to stray and think about what is going to happen tomorrow, or who is the best actor right now, or what is the best movie showing in the cinema at the moment or some weird thing.…

This is what is called unclean focus. The focus is not clean. We need to have clean focus.

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Clean focus is where you try to focus on one thing for approximately 50 minutes and when you see yourself starting to lose focus, you try to get back your focus gradually.… Don’t rush it but gradually get back your focus on the task at hand.

This is very similar to the last post about time management techniques but they are all very inter-related.

The fact of the matter is that having focus is key to getting anything done in your life and if there is no focus then you are just mistaking activity for productivity. You can set a schedule and say you are going to study Maths for 1 hour but if during that 1 hour you are doing non mathematical related stuff then you are just wasting time and fooling yourself.

Start applying this time management technique called Clean Focus and see the difference that it makes.

Thank you and have a very productive day!!!

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Time Management Techniques (Part 3 of 7)

Brian — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:20:15 +0000

Hi there folks. I hope you are enjoying these time management techniques that I am sharing.

The third technique I will like to share on is called enlightened multitasking.

Before I share what this means, let me just say that a study was done that shows blackberries lower iq more than smoking pot!!! Yes your heard that right. People who are on blackberries tend to multitask too much and this it seems could lead to a drop in iq.

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So what do I mean by enlightened multitasking? In the last post I talked about scheduling your interruptions and when you are doing this you can try to do as much multitasking as possible because you are in an interruption time. e.g you return as much calls as possible, reply to as much email as you can, read as much email as you can etc.

You are given permission in this time to do multitasking because I know that there are some people who cannot help to not multitask. This is one point in time when you can feel free to multitask.

Just remember that after this time is over, you stop the multitasking and you then focus for a given period of time on the task at hand.

So that’s it for tip number 3. Hope you enjoyed it. Happy Multi tasking!!!

Feel free to leave a comment.

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Time Management Techniques (Part 2 of 7)

Brian — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:02:21 +0000

Good day fellow readers. How is your weekend going? I hope you enjoyed the last post that dealt with time management techniques.

In the last post we talked about eliminating distractions and committing to do something for a certain given period of time continuously. If you had put that into practice it sure should have made you a very productive person.

In today’s post I will like to talk to you about a concept called Scheduling your interruptions. Now once again I will like to thank Eben Pagan for sharing this concept as it is another great concept to put in your life.

Now what do I mean by scheduling your interruptions? You need to let people know when you can be reached and when you cannot be reached e.g if you are a student and you have friends who like to call you at all kinds of times to gossip about what is going on in class, which boy likes which girl etc, you need to schedule these things. What I mean is if you know that you are going to do homework between the hours of 7–9, then let your friends know that you cannot be reached during those times as you will be busy but they can call between the hours of 4–7 p.m

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This is how you schedule your interruptions. If people email you a lot and you need to respond to their emails, then set up an autoresponder with gmail that lets people know that you aren’t available at the moment but you will be available between the hours of x and y.

When people know these things, you set up your life and your interruptions in such a way that when people interrupt you, you make sure that you aren’t doing anything extremely important at that time, so you will be available to meet whatever request they may have.

So this is what is meant by Scheduling your interruptions. If you enjoyed this post then feel free to leave a comment and let the world know what you thought of this!!!

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How To Overcome Procrastination

Brian — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:11:10 +0000

Procrastination is one of the biggest problems that every one faces at some time in their life. I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who hasn’t procrastinated on anything. Procrastination can be one difficult force to overcome because we have developed the habit of procrastinating. We are all directly where we are in life right now because of our habits that we do day in and day out. Someone says that ‘your habit predicts your future’ and that is so true.

So how do I destroy one of the most destructive habits around which is called procrastination?

Firstly we need to identify what are the main things we are procrastinating on. Get a pen and paper and list the things that you are procrastinating on. E.g. a report, studying for an important exam, it might be seeing a doctor, starting a membership in a gym etc.

Now ask yourself why I am procrastinating on these things. Write down your answer to that question also. Some possible answers may be that you would rather watch TV than study for an exam or you do not think you could make the commitment to go to a gym regularly etc.

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Now let’s fast forward your life to 5 years in the future. Imagine if you made that commitment to go to gym regularly from now on, what your life would be like then. Just imagine the health you would now have, how great your body looks, the energy you now have to do things you didn’t have the time to do because of lack of energy. Imagine walking down the streets and those girls or guys are checking you out. Just write down all of the things that the future would look like if you did what needed to be done. Write it down until you can actually feel these things. Don’t you see how much better your life would be?

Another way to do this is to think of what could happen if you continue to put these things off. Imagine if you don’t decide to go to gym and get your weight or health in order what could happen. You could be facing an early death, probably missing your children’s wedding ceremony, probably not being there to support your wife when she needs you badly. Imagine if you fail that exam and it keeps you back for an entire year in high school so that you can’t go to college. Do you see how painful these things can be when we procrastinate on them? Tony Robbins says that everything we do is either to avoid pain or gain pleasure and that is so true. Let us try our best to avoid pain, and the pain I am talking about is the pain of regret.

The truth is, the reason we procrastinate is because we are focusing on what we don’t like instead of focusing on what the end result will be if we do get the correct things done. We are focusing on the process instead of the ‘prize’. When we focus on the prize we get the motivation to do what we want to do. Stop focusing on the process and start focusing on the ‘prize’ and you will overcome your procrastination.

How To Overcome Procrastination is a post from: Brian’s Motivational Blog