If you lack follow-through, I have great news.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
It’s time to learn how to get stuff done, so you can celebrate your success.
Welcome to the final installment in my 3 part series on cheerful time management.
So far we’ve been talking about tactics. How to plan your time so you feel energized at the end of the day. How to use blocks of time to make sure you get what you want out of life.
Back in May, I blogged about an essential truth of time management. Here’s the gist of that blog:
You still have to deliver value and results to the company that pays your salary – on the regular and in good faith, but as long as you think there is something more important or someone more important than your own decisions about what you’re going to do with your next 24 hours? You’re sunk. You’ll waste time, give up time and let work slide into personal time and personal time slide into work time. You have to value yourself before you can set up a time management system that works.
And in March, I discussed how we each have to fight for our time. Here are the basics of that blog:
- Spend the majority of your day doing the work that is most expensive or most skilled.
- Plan results – not time.
- Refuse to work at the expense of yourself.
- Stop using work to escape your life.
The titan in the room is … EXECUTION.
There’s no point in planning your days, ordering your activities or doodling about results if you don’t actually do anything. How do I know this? I’m a daydreamer, a procrastinator and I have a very hard time making myself do stuff. So how do I run two internet businesses and work my day job – and still have time to play with my granddaughter?
You can try to use willpower. If you’re reading a bunch of blogs on time management, I’m guessing that hasn’t worked so well for you. It’s not my go-to either.
You can build habit stacks. Carefully constructing triggers, habits, and rewards, like breadcrumbs leading you to your goal. Great for exercising daily, not so good for getting through a whole day.
Or – you walk your little brain through a 15-minute analysis that will open you up and make tackling your next task something you actually want to do.
I’m going to give you that process, right here. It’s going to look very simple. You are not likely to actually try it. I swear on my day-planner that this process is worth every minute you spend on it.
First, sit down and fill half of a sheet of notebook paper with all the random thoughts you have about your next task (assuming you’re procrastinating doing it.) Let’s say it’s a schedule for a project. You write all the stuff you’re thinking as in my example below. You can see it’s just free-flowing and not all that logical or positive. This is the excellent material my brain hands me when I don’t manage it well.
I’ll never get this done on time. All this stuff can’t be done. I’m just fakin’ it here. We’ll never pull this off. Maybe we can do it. If I don’t put together a schedule, I’ll never have a chance at succeeding. This project was doomed from the start. It’s not my fault. It’s all my fault. Writing this is a waste of time I should be doing email. The project is important and I can write a schedule. I hate doing this.
Great stuff, right? If I stop the process right now, or if I don’t even bother to write my thoughts down, I’ll feel overwhelmed or fearful. Those feelings send me right to my inbox to knock out a few emails and get myself a nice hit of reward hormones. I feel better in the short term but that project will still be there in the back of my mind.
Next, pick one thought.
We’ll never pull this off
Ask yourself what fact, or situation this thought is about. Make that fact completely lacking in drama. In this case, the situation is “My Project Schedule” or better yet “Schedule”.
Now, list out 5 positive thoughts you believe and 5 negative thoughts you believe about your situation or fact. I recommend doing the positives first. Notice how you don’t want to write the negatives after doing the positives.
Positive & Seems True: Our best chance is with a schedule. The schedule doesn’t have to be perfect. I can add stuff to the schedule as we work with it. I’ve done a million schedules and they always help. It’s possible we’ll succeed.
Negative & Seems True: I’m going to fail. I’ve been putting this off. I’m actually just in the same place we often get on a project, needing to understand all the details so we can help ourselves. I’m just a manager trying to do everything. I’m tired of writing down negative thoughts – I want to go write my schedule
I’ve had a lot of practice at this process and you can see in the example that my brain is quickly turning away from the negative and ready to move on. However, for some of you, finding five true and positive thoughts is going to be really hard. Try using – it’s possible, at least or it’s just to pry some positive thoughts out.
Why bother with this?
The reason you’re not taking action isn’t that you’re fundamentally flawed, weak-willed or lazy. Our brains are designed to protect us from harm. Failing at a task that the tribe wants us to do is inherently risky. We could lose our place. We could be out in the snow with the wolves hunting us down. We could die.
Our brains don’t know that we have access to hundreds of tribes on social media. They don’t know that our family isn’t going to toss us out to die if we create a bad project plan. So our brains want us to do what we did yesterday – skip the plan, skip the schedule. After all, we lived, didn’t we?
Getting all this out on paper makes thoughts into objects.
Once you get your thought, find your fact, and list out your positives and negatives, do a quick motivation check. Are you ready to work? If yes, go to it.
If not, then list out how each thought makes you feel and then imagine how you act when you feel that way. Notice the result those actions get you. Do the negatives first this time.
Schedule: I’ve been putting this off. When that thought crosses my mind I literally feel sick to my stomach, which means I feel fear. When I’m afraid, I want to run away, change tasks, cry – basically put it off.
Schedule: I’m going to fail. I feel depressed. When I’m depressed, I eat candy, get a cup of coffee, check my emails. All of those actions actually make me fail.
Schedule: Our best chance is with a schedule. I feel logical when I think it. When I feel logical, I just start listing out project steps. Then I’m closer to being done.
Schedule: I’ve done a million schedules and they always help. I feel hopeful when I think it. When I feel hopeful, I want to finish the schedule. I list out tasks. I finish the schedule
This process makes it very clear what impact your thinking is having on you getting the task done. It also gets your frontal cortex in the game. Once you lay all this out, it’s pretty hard to keep walking around procrastinating. It just doesn’t make any sense. What would happen if you scheduled fifteen minutes to do this process before you started project work you normally put off?
That? Is how I work on stuff without using willpower or habits.
That? Is Good to Know.
If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure
This process takes practice. Helping people through this is what I’ve been trained to do. I’ve helped lots of people change their work habits from unhappy procrastination to revitalized effectiveness. I can help you too.