If you’re like me, you really want to accomplish great and fun things in your life, but you never quite muster up the focus, energy, and skills to get it done. Like me, you read the occasional productivity blog from some guru, then sit down and say to yourself ‘yeah, I’ll do that maybe. I should.’ Then you watch some more Fails on youtube.
This is my first post on productivity, mostly because I have a love/hate relationship with such posts – mostly they lead me to self-loathing and snacking when I’m full. But here goes my simple encouragement to you – even if I am stumbling forward, you can join me – it beats sitting on your butt whining.
A. Learn the Getting Things Done (GTD) method.
Don’t buy any books, just google it. It’s simple, but effective. Basically, before you do anything each day do this (this is very simplified, but you get it):
- Dump all your to-do’s onto a list – pull them from your Inbox, your mind, wherever
- Put them into Project lists
- For each project, pick the next step action, put it at the top of that list
- Prioritize all of your next steps into High, Med, Low priority. If you have more than 10 Highs, you need to define high more narrowly. Like “if I don’t do this in the next 24 hours I am hosed”
- If you can, do the hardest one first (to whit, buy the short audiobook Eat That Frog and get inspired to kick some ass)
B. Keep restarting until it sticks
Yep, we all learn this stuff 10 times before we get into the habit. Just keep getting back on.
C. Learn the higher level planning activities
Once you have the basic discipline down, learn to do weekly, monthly, annual goal setting and planning. But let this wait until after you get the basic daily list thing working.
D. Keep restarting till it sticks
There are great methods for doing your longer range planning, mission statement formation, etc. Just keep trying, you’ll find something you like.
My definition of procrastination – not doing what you really want to because you are afraid, making excuses, and lacking in perspective and encouragement.