Photo Credit: The Pirata

Your motivation is what pushed you to succeed and determines to a large degree if you are going to succeed or fail. But even the most motivated person needs a little extra help sometimes.

When the going gets tough these 5 tips can help you turn the day around and get you back on track.

Getting out of a cold streak
 I recall using these techniques with one of my salesmen; he was having a really bad week and was on the verge of just giving up, working just meant another rejection anyway.

At the beginning of the month we had set the goal that he was going to make two sales a week and agreed upon a very nice reward if he made it.

He was still motivated, as he really wanted the reward, but just couldn’t focus and get hungry about his work.

We went through these 5 tips (I will share the results with you below):

•    Focus on Your Goals
Your motivation stands in direct relationship to how clear your goals are, they are the source of your motivation. When you feel down, focus on them, visualize them and think about how great it will be once you have completed them.

•    Reward Yourself for Finishing Tasks
This is a great technique. Whenever you finish a task or complete a goal, give yourself a reward.
It can be a cup of coffee, a 10 minute break, a weekend away…. Anything that gets you motivated.
By doing this you train yourself to want to complete the goals and tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible, you will work hard to complete your goals, get the reward and move on the next. Always remember though, make sure you do the job well, you don’t want to have to go back and redo the task you already thought was finished.

•    Take a Short Walk
Sometimes you need a break, to clear your mind and get yourself back on track. Taking a walk is a great way to sort your thoughts and refocus.

•    Remember That When You Are Done, You Are Done
By this I mean that once you have done everything you need to do during the day, you are finished and can go home. That gives me a burst of motivation every time the day starts to feel long, it is up to me to make it go quickly so I can relax.

•    Call a Loved One for Inspiration
Sometimes we cannot do it alone. Make sure to find a friend or loved one who can help you when you need motivation, who you can call and who you know will tell you that you can do it and that they know you are great.

That help really makes a big difference.

So how did it go for my colleague?
He started by getting out of the office and taking a walk. He then sat down and made an action plan listing rewards for finished tasks. He knew he wanted to complete the goal and was going to do everything in his power to complete it.
He got back to work and after 3 hours of hard work had made a dozen great calls, lined up some potential customers but still not made a sale.
He felt he was slipping back into his apathy, so he called his wife. She talked to him, listened to him and spurred him on.

When they hung up he had renewed his energy and got back to work. 1 hour later he had made a close and his confidence came rushing back.

2 weeks later he was back on course and on his was to break his personal best.
That is the power of these easy techniques.

If you are having a tough time, don’t let that get you down. Refocus and let yourself be all that you can be!

Action Exercises
•    Set your goals
If you haven’t already, spend some time writing down your most important long term and short term goals.

•    Determine a good reward that motivates you to complete tasks and goals

•    Talk to someone you trust and ask them to be a source of motivation for you when you need it.

Daniel writes to us from Oslo, Norway. If you want to read more posts like this, visit Looking Into Business – where you can learn about Sales Techniques, Motivation and Success.

Do you feel as though your work, studying or chores always end up taking too long? Do you feel as though you could be more effective if only you could stay on task?

Maybe you’re convinced it’s a question of will power, or organization, or motivation. The solution, though, might be very simple.

One of the easiest ways to get dramatic improvements in your productivity is to use a timer. You can grab the one from your kitchen, use the alarm on your phone, or try one of the popular free online timers like e.ggtimer.com or Tick Tock Timer.

When you’ve got a timing ticking away, you’ll suddenly discover a new sense of focus which you never knew you had. Here are five specific ways in which your timer will help:

Writing and Working Faster

A lot of the writers I know – of fiction and of non-fiction – use timers to focus for specific periods. It’s all too easy to get distracted when you’ve told yourself that you’ll spend a whole morning on that report or article or short story … when you’ve got thirty minutes to sit down and focus, you’re much more likely to get on with the task at hand.

Timers work particularly well for big tasks without an obvious end point, like clearing your emails. You might not be able to face getting through the whole backlog at once – but spending fifteen focused minutes every day will go a long way to clearing it.

Studying More Effectively

If you’re in school or working towards a qualification, you’ll be spending at least some of your time studying. Your brain can’t focus on learning for hours on end – experts think that it’s best to concentrate for between 25 and 45 minutes, then take a break to recharge.

Next time you sit down to study, try setting a timer for thirty minutes. It’s a lot easier to stay focused and motivated when you know you have a break coming up.

Getting Through Chores

I hate doing chores, and often end up putting them off – which only means they end up being more of a pain! You might well feel the same. One technique that works really well is to spend just five to fifteen minutes on something – it’s surprising how much you can get done. Even I can just about stand to clean the kitchen for ten minutes!

FlyLady popularized the idea of using a fifteen minute timer to tackle chores, and hosts of fans around the internet testify to the effectiveness of this.

All we ask is that you set a timer and spend 15 minutes a day decluttering. That’s it. Anyone can do anything for only 15 minutes, even if you have to break it down into 5 minutes segments.

(Declutter 15 Minutes a Day – 5 Great Tools That Make it Easy! on FlyLady.net)

Limiting Your Procrastination

We all need to take breaks in order to remain productive. The problem is, it’s all too easy for a twenty-minute break to turn into two hours of browsing the net and giggling at pictures of cats with silly captions.

When you decide it’s time for a break, set a timer. Give yourself around ten – twenty minutes, depending on what you feel you need. Once that alarm goes off, get straight back on track with your next task. (It helps if you’ve made up your mind what to do next before taking your break.)

Making Phone Calls

How often have you been on the phone with someone for far longer than you meant to? It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re chatting, only to realize that a whole hour’s gone by. If you’re making a call, set a timer going (preferably one which has a silent alert, like a pop-up on the screen). Once the alarm goes off, you’ll be reminded to draw the conversation to a close.

If you’re conducting an interview by phone, this is also a good technique to make sure you don’t have to keep one eye on the clock – you can chat away with your full focus on the conversation, and when your alarm goes off to tell you there’s five or ten minutes to go, you can draw things to a close.

Have you tried using a timer to improve your productivity? How did it work out for you?

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We’re often told that hard work gets us ahead. That’s true to an extent – if you put effort and focus into something, you’re going to achieve more than if you go at it in a half-hearted way. But it’s all too easy to get sucked into working long hours, ticking tasks off a list, without being all that effective or successful.

Instead of just working hard – putting in lots of hours – look for ways to work smart.

Why?

Because smart work means you’re more likely to reach your goals. Sadly, it’s all too possible to work hard without any recognition and without achieving success. Sure, you might be up to date with all your emails … but that might not bring you any nearer to winning a promotion, or to starting your own business.

Plus, when we’re working hard, other areas of our life get neglected. Maybe you’re working long hours but eating poorly and never exercising. It might not seem like such a bad choice now, but when you run into health problems a few years down the road, you’re going to wish you’d found a better balance.

Working too hard can have a really negative effect on your quality of life, too. Long hours and the pressure to keep doing more can lead to stress, burn out, depression, or just that miserable feeling of is this all there is to life?

So how can you get away from the mindset of working hard and start working smart?

1.    Get Help

Yes, you might want to get to the top and say “I did it all myself.” The truth is, to succeed, you need to let other people help you. Read the acknowledgements in any bestselling book, and you’ll see the author giving credit to a whole host of supporters – editors, agents, friends, family.

Help can come in all sorts of forms. It might be emotional support. It might be someone taking care of the cooking or the housework so that you can focus on work. It could have a direct relation to your work – either by delegating tasks which don’t use your skills to the full, or by getting advice on an area which you’re struggling with on your own.

2.    Rest More

I’m always a bit iffy about stories of people functioning on three hours sleep while they build their business empire. Sure, they might achieve something great – but I always wonder if they’d have done even better with a full night’s rest.

If you’re doing anything remotely creative or which requires concentration, you’re not going to be at anywhere near 100% if you’re not resting enough. That doesn’t just mean getting a good night’s sleep – it also means taking time off to relax and play. This isn’t “wasting” time – it’s ensuring that you can be on top form during your working hours.

3.    First Things First

“First Things First” is one of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits” in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It means taking care of the most important things in your life before turning to the rest.

If you tend to prioritize by urgency – dealing with whatever comes in by email or by phone – then find a way to structure your day so that your important work gets done first. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in a single focused hour at the start of the workday, when you’re feeling fresh and motivated.

4.    Limit Your Goals

Of course, if you’re going to put first things first, that means knowing what’s really important. Chasing multiple goals at once isn’t usually a good strategy. You might be able to manage it if your goals support one another (e.g. “eat more healthily” might give you the energy for “launch my business”), but having lots of goals generally diffuses your attention.

Rather than trying to do everything at once, pick one or two key goals for each year, and focus wholeheartedly on those. It’s much better to actually accomplish a dream than to have a vague stab at lots of different things … only to end up making very little progress.

Have you got any tips to add on working smart, not hard? Let us know in the comments…

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Grade school was an impressionable time for everyone. It’s when we became immersed into a mini-society, learning valuable life lessons that have remained through adulthood. If you think about it, many comparisons can be made between life in grade school and life in the real world. For example, back then, we had to learn to coexist with our peers – for better or for worse. And for many, it has proven to be a never-ending learning process; though you’re hopefully better at it now than you were as an 8-year-old. Here are a few life lessons we learned during that fun yet trying time, when the world was fresh and we were a bit more resilient.

• Pay attention
  When you’re a kid and possess the attention span of a fruit fly, paying attention isn’t the easiest of tasks. This was especially the case when you first entered elementary school. No longer was there naptime or extended periods of time to expend your massive amounts of energy – recess wasn’t nearly long enough. In junior high, the opposite sex served as a constant distraction – if not an obsession.
• Dealing with the opposite sex is difficult
  When you first became interested in the opposite sex, your attempts to figure them out were futile. How do you know if they like you? How do you make them like you? Once you finally get a girlfriend or boyfriend, how do you keep them happy? How do keep yourself happy? And the questions mount as you get older.
• Follow directions
  “Doing your own thing” was always cool, but it would land you in a heap of trouble. Depending on the personality of your teacher, your insubordinate acts might’ve resulted in prison-like experiences. Sitting out recess, enduring detention and coping with isolated lunches were never easy. And when it came to schoolwork, an overlooked detail in the instructions would result in a bloodbath of red ink on the assignment, making it not refrigerator-worthy.
• Honesty is the best policy
  Getting caught in a lie meant trouble. Typically, some sort of punishment was the consequence of telling a verifiable fib to a teacher or principle. Their trust was violated – as they probably told you – and from that point forward even your truthful statements were questioned. Now as an adult, a lie could result losing your job or divorce, for example. Hopefully, you learned your lesson.
• Every action has a consequence
  A mature and intelligent person knows to always think before they act. Otherwise, they might face negative consequences – like after telling a lie. Another problem that every child endures is peer pressure, which is pervasive in a school environment.
• Peer pressure is bad
  Conformity was necessary to an extent. After all, you didn’t want to be a social outcast – even in elementary school. But like the DARE Program taught you, mindlessly following the crowd could bring trouble. In cases when your friends wanted you to partake in potentially harmful activities, “doing your own thing” wasn’t so bad.
• Treat people with respect
  Even during adulthood, not everybody treats their peers with respect. Perhaps the people who don’t missed the “do unto others” lesson in grade school. The ability to empathize with others should’ve been honed during those early stages of social interaction.
• There’s always a social hierarchy
  There was always the cool kid, the nerd, the talker, the shy one, the rebel, the pretty girl and the drama queen/king; who it was and the extent of their behavior varied as you progressed through school. As an adult, you find that people tend to fill these same roles in the workplace – for better or for worse.
• Always stand up for yourself
  Amid the personal struggle of determining whether or not you should conform and give in to peer pressure, it was important that you developed a strong sense of self in the process. Your ability to defend your convictions back then shaped who you’ve become as an adult. On a more basic level, fighting off a bully enabled you to assert yourself as an independent human being who deserved respect. As life has progressed, you’ve likely encountered more bullies, but in different forms, and your will to deal with them was cultivated when you were a child.
• Roll with the punches
  People tend to forget the trying times that came during grade school. Sure, you didn’t have much responsibility and you benefitted from living under the wings of your parents, but you also had to deal with personal insecurity, teasing, bullying and a general lack of wisdom that affected your everyday decisions. Later in life, as things become more difficult, it’s essential that you know how to face the problems that are thrown your way. Life isn’t a fairytale, so you have to roll with the punches.

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A few months ago I had a toothache and so I went to see a dentist. He had a look at the problem and then knocked off a bit of my tooth and smoothed the rough edge down. I can feel it now as I’m writing this. He told me that he could try to build the tooth back up, but that a basic rule of dentistry is that removal strengthens and addition weakens.

I am not a Buddhist and I don’t know much about Buddhism. But one thing I know – and I think it’s probably all I need or care to know – is that Buddhism teaches a simple truth: suffering comes from attachment, and the end of attachment is the end of suffering. So whenever you can feel yourself feeling bad, you know you’ve become attached to something. Something matters to you.

There is no end to the list of things you can be attached to, no end to the things that can matter to you, things that you care about, things that have meaning for you. People sometimes talk about the ‘meaning of life’ – in the Buddhist view, meaning means suffering. So the way to stop suffering is to relinquish meaning. Let it go. Surrender.

So what’s at the top of the list? What means the most to you? Your marriage? Your job? Money? The stories you tell yourself about who or what you are?

But here is the root of the matter – nothing ever stays the same. The world is constantly changing, and so are you.  Trying to hold on to something that’s always changing is like trying to tie water up in a brown paper package – it can’t be done and only makes you angry (or sad, or frustrated, or depressed, or a whole host of bad stuff). Trying to hold onto impermanent things (ie everything) is a recipe for unhappiness and pain.

So what’s the alternative? Instead of clinging, recognize the truth – that you are always changing, and so is the world – and so to follow the moving currents of life is the only sensible option if you want to be happy. This means letting go of your stories about what matters. It means giving up everything – in a sense, it means losing yourself. When you see the world through your own eyes, not the eyes of who you tell yourself you are – wife, father, teacher, introvert, victim, leader – it’s all so different.

Just as in dentistry, in life, subtracting is always better than adding. When you drop the stories you’ve been telling yourself, drop the labels – when all that stuff doesn’t matter any more – something strange happens. Life starts to work. All the things you cared about and strived for start to show up. The philosopher of Asian religion, Alan Watts, called this the ‘law of reversed effort’ – when a man who can’t swim struggles to stay afloat, he sinks, but when he yields to the water, he floats; when a fly in a spiders’ web struggles to become free, it only enmeshes itself more in the web.  Being still, watching as life unfolds, unattached (not caring about stuff)and letting things work in their own miraculous way is also called the ‘art of allowing.’

The truth of the matter is that, whatever we might think, we cannot force life to go our way. When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to saw wood – he told me to make sure I was moving along the grain, and to let the saw do the work. After a bit of practice, it did indeed feel as if the saw was doing all the work. I was there, holding the saw, but there was a kind of letting go, a kind of effortlessness that led to more effective results. By working with the grain of wood, a carpenter can create amazing and stylish pieces of furniture, but he has to respect the integrity of the material – the way it flows. By sailing – or tacking – with the wind, a skilful sailor can travel enormous distances, but she has to be observant and follow the changing air currents.

I am not a Buddhist. That’s another label, another story to tell myself. But to let go of attachment, to stop caring about things, to allow life to unfold and, in so doing, to achieve more, seems to me like a better way to live.

Mark Harrison writes for a number of self development sites, including his own, EffortlessAbundance. Check out his latest book, Thirty Days to Change Your Life.

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Getting things done is a topic of many websites out there these days, and they all say different things.  How is a person supposed to get anything done when there are so many sites to read on how to get things done?!?  I don’t subscribe to any specific guru out there, but here are a few ways that I have stayed productive for the last several years.  These methods might not be ground breaking, but they work for me, and I think they will work for you too.

Create Small Lists

I take an 8 1/2×11 sheet of paper and fold it in half three times, and use one side to make my list.  This accomplishes a few things.  First it keeps my list short, which requires me to only put my high priority items on the list.  Second, I can carry it around with me easily during the day so I can mark things off of the list.  This is very motivating.  Finally it saves paper; I just refold it for the next list!  Keeping a small list makes the to-do list less overwhelming and more manageable.

Put Everything in a Calendar

I put everything in my calendar.  The good thing about this is that I don’t have to remember things, I just check my calendar the night before (more on this later) and I end up making all my meetings.  The bad thing about this is that if it isn’t in my calendar, it doesn’t get done.  This has taken some training of the people around me as well as some discipline on my part to keep it up to date.  In the beginning there were a couple missed meetings and phone calls, but the world didn’t come to an end, and now not many things slip through the cracks.  Whether you keep a calendar in hard copy form or digital form is up to you.  I use Google calendar because I can sync it between all of my computers and devices so I don’t miss anything.  Also, a great tool for training the people around you is Timebridge.  This allows you to provide a web page to people so they can schedule time with you based on the availability on your calendar.  I use this all the time, and it prevents a lot of back and forth when scheduling meetings.

Have Everything Accessible

This is very important to me.  I try to get everything in digital form, and put it in a place where I can access it from wherever I am at the time.  There are many tools that make this easy, but the one that I use is Evernote.  This allows you to capture things in many different ways, and access them from an online website, or sync them between multiple computers or mobile devices.  The other thing I use is an iPhone.  This has become a device I cannot live without.  This particular brand is not required, but some type of smart phone is a great time saver.  You get to carry around your calendar, contacts, and anything else you can access on the Internet through sites like Evernote.  Additionally, there are thousands of applications out there to help you do everything.  I still write my to-do list on paper though.

Plan the Night Before

Each evening, right before I go to bed, I look at my calendar for the next day.  This allows me to identify any special events that require something outside the norm, such as an early meeting or a late meeting that will cause me to miss dinner with my family.  This also allows me to get a good night’s rest because I am not worrying that I am missing something important for the next day.

There you have it, four simple things that have enabled me to accomplish an enormous amount of stuff in a single day.  They may not be cutting edge, but they have worked for me for a long time!  What are some ways that you use to deal with the avalanche of things in your life?

When he is not flying around the world securing complex computing systems, Sean Mathena runs Find Your Peak where he helps people to achieve peak performance in every area of their life.  Let him help you improve your life by visiting Find Your Peak today!

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A couple of days ago, sadly, shockingly, one of my dear friends took her own life. I will miss her largely, and will treasure her joy, laughter, incredible energy, savory jokes, smile, and her love of people. She was a special jewel, and I hope she knows how special she was, even in her afterlife.

When these unforgettable and unexpected events occur in life, I struggle to understand “the lesson.” I believe that my girlfriend is in a more peaceful place, so the lesson is really for me.

My friend was on a roll. But it wasn’t a good roll; it was a downward roll, worsened by procrastination. There were other things involved of course, but I feel that the “devil of procrastination” ultimately took her down. Others may say it was “finances,” or “depression,” but I think her finances could have been mended and the depression would have lifted, had procrastination not been running amuck. It all snowballed and grew into the ultimate procrastination…the procrastination of living, and then…the end of her life.

That got me thinking about how to break the downward spiraling cycle of procrastination before it spins completely out of control and leads to emotional madness. Procrastination is a sensation of fear, a secondary fear and a cover for an original fear, so by the time we identify it; procrastination is a clue we haven’t been dealing well with initial issues. Now we have secondary issues to conquer before solving the primary issues. We must stop the procrastination right away.

Here my scheme to break the hold of the Devil of Procrastination. This is not time management, it is Procrastination Management:

1. List things you have been procrastinating, call it your Procrastination Management List (you know what they are.)
2. Now break each item in the list down into the smallest possible micro-parts.
3. Rewrite the list and title it your Micro-Success List.
4. Give yourself permission to accomplish only 1 item on the Micro-Success List per day. No more, no less.
5. Start all over at the beginning of each month with a new “ Procrastination Management List,” break it down into small pieces and create a new Micro-Success List for the month.
6. Make a thankful list recognizing each micro-success accomplished in the prior month.

This takes about 20 minutes for the initial list and 15 minutes a day, and will prevent you immeasurable heartache. Using this scheme, you can gently bring yourself out of denial (and immobilization); and into a pattern of allowing yourself to experience small successes.

The Devil of Procrastination will taunt us with our failures. As you experience micro-successes, you begin to feel better and can ignore the taunts and negative self-talk. As you feel better and more energized, you accomplish what you thought you were too afraid to do. As you express thankfulness for things accomplished, more fears dissolve! Now you are on a roll. A good roll.

However, if procrastination fears have taken over, we forget “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and that it really does help to “eat an elephant just one bite at a time!” The Procrastination Management method above applied for just 15 minutes a day, will convince us that we truly can conquer Rome, or whatever we set out to do!  Did procrastination take my friend.? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was just her time to go. Goodbye, V.C. RIP.

Deborah S Nelson is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of Author Your Dreams Publishing

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Ever had one of those days when you’ve got such a ridiculous amount of stuff to do that even the idea of unpacking the groceries makes you feel frazzled and teary? When you frantically flit from task to task, never quite completing anything and in most cases not really doing anything useful at all? When by night-time it’s hard to escape the somewhat depressing fact that although you’ve been stupidly busy all day you’ve actually accomplished precisely zip?

Of course you have, right? We all do. At least, those of us with a ticking pulse. Stress is part of our culture. Perhaps for some of us more than others, but my bet is that if you’re at all active in the online world then you are, by nature, a goal-driven person. Which makes you perfect prey for the claws of the stress beast.

Myself, I have those days all the time. Mainly when I’m doing something totally normal like oh, I don’t know, trying to juggle my wriggly 6-month old on my lap (feeling guilty that I’m not engaging with her) while simultaneously writing a blog post, checking my emails every 5 min, suddenly realizing that  it’s 11.17 and I have a client arriving at my house in 13 minutes and yet for some reason I’m still sitting in a café waiting for a coffee to show up. And I haven’t, in fact, actually been very creative at all even though I’ve been working for the better part of the day.

They say that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Well the truth is I’m constantly getting asked to ‘help out’ with projects and rarely would I refuse. I pride myself on getting things done. Even if it means doing other people’s stuff and letting my own pursuits gather dust. And on the rare occasions when I do actively switch off; take a few hours to relax sans technology I feel – lost. Unsure of myself. I’ve forgotten how to just be me because me has become a person with not just a head, two arms and a leg, but an always-attached laptop, an often anxious or worried stare, and constantly flickering eyes as I revise and revise and revise my to-do list.

Can you relate?

If you’ve read this far I’m guessing yes. In which case I don’t have to tell you the flipside of all this (I’ll tell you anyway). Sometimes it all comes together and you feel AMAZING. Right? You actually do manage to check 35 tasks off your list, all the while being incredibly creative, and even attempting reasonably normal social engagement with anyone whose path you might cross. On a really good day you might even get time to eat properly or have a workout.

But those days can be all too few, can’t they? More often than not you just end up feeling exhausted by the never-endingness of it all. Tired but wired.

So here’s a question for you:

Are you driven by stress or by productivity?

You do realize they’re not the same thing? I’ll admit, it’s taken me a while to figure this out and truth be told I’m still getting there, but the following six points work really well for me.

Don’t Kid Yourself

You know those days when you do actually get something big and important done? Feels pretty good, right? So maybe you are managing okay after all? Maybe your busy lifestyle is just the way things have to be in order to achieve your goals and manage the day-to-day necessities. Don’t kid yourself. Living life like a typical busy person may allow you to be productive from time-to-time, but let’s be honest. Never being fully present in the task at hand due to all the other things you could or should be doing is still no way to live. Is it? From now on I want you to actively choose a handful of items that you know you won’t do each day. Cross them off your list and actually focus on your one or two big things.

Take A Day Off For Evaluation

“Take a day of?!! Is she freakin’ insane? Think of all the catch up I’ll have to do. The very idea of it makes me reach for the nearest paperbag!”

The more that little rant resonates as something that might actually cross your mind, the greater the need for said day off. The purpose of the day off is to allow you to take a mental step back and re-assess what’s really important to you. I like to do this by first categorizing every area of my life. Anal, I know, but it works for me. You might like to put together a weekly plan; a template of the perfect week. If you can’t realistically slot in all your ‘must-dos’ and still have room to breathe, then something’s gonna have to go. If you find (like I did) that everything is important to you, then you’re just going to have to prioritize.

Cut Back Your Wish List

I’ve heard it said that most people seriously overestimate what they can do in a year, and then – as a result of rushing around all year like a headless chook – seriously under-accomplish what they’re capable of in a decade. Avoid this by acknowledging that you can’t and never will do everything. It’s realistic to have 2 or 3 big projects for each year. THAT’S IT. Accept that some – if not most – of the rest of your list is going to have to get the chop. My 3 big things are to sell 100 copies of my new holistic weight loss book, to pay off my credit card debt, and to achieve my pre-pregnancy weight. There’s a lot of other stuff I’d like to do, but if I get those 3 the year will be a success.

Control Your Daily List

If you’re anything like me then you pretty much have to have a list to work with each day. Even when I’m being organized my life is super-full. It’s in my nature, and it’s impossible to avoid. But I can do it well or I can do it poorly. What works for me is to list pretty much every little task, from read my daughter a book, to remember to take my multi-vitamin, to follow up a bill, and so on. As a result I do often have over 30 items on my list, but it works well as things don’t get forgotten. Still, it can be overwhelming. If long lists are your thing then take charge of them by numerically prioritizing your tasks for the day. Do it the night before. For example, task ‘0’- time with God, task ‘1’ – take supplements, task ‘2’ read book, task ‘3’ finish guest post for Pick The Brain. This helps you to stay focused and know that if you do run out of time later in the day you will have completed the things you chose as priorities.

Accept Failure As A Good Thing

With that in mind I’d suggest you make it okay in your mind to not get things done. Embrace the idea not just as realistic, but as positive. Failing to complete the faffy items allows you more time and mental energy to focus on the stuff that really matters. And if you can take an evaluation day every 4-6 weeks then you’ll be able to rest easy in the fact that you are focusing on the stuff that really matters.

And you know what? When the inevitable happens, when life intervenes and you do end up stuck in overload then it won’t matter as much. It will be little more than a blip on your road to success, and you’ll be able to face it and move on. Don’t forget that stress is supposed to be a positive thing – it challenges us, drives us to achieve and conquer. But you’re only going to enjoy those benefits when you choose to control your use of time rather than let it control you.

What do you do to feel productive and in control of your life? Comment below!

Kat Eden is a Personal Trainer, nutrition coach and freelance writer from Melbourne, Australia. Visit her blog for regular nutrition and motivational tips to drive you to your goals faster. Kat recently released her e-book Secrets Of Lasting Weight Loss Revealed. It took her 26 months to complete because she was stuck in overwhelm for most of that time. Fortunately Kat is slowly but surely learning to follow her own advice and is now hitting her goals faster than every before.

If you’ve been reading personal development blogs for any length of time, you’ll have come across plenty of posts about goals. We’re all expected to have them. We’re told that having goals means we’ll be happy high-achievers, storming through life as we check off yet another item on our to-do list.

And yes, setting goals for yourself can help you to stay focused on what you want from life. It can help to counter our bias towards short-term thinking and short-term results. But even if you’ve diligently written down your goals, if you’ve created your vision board or made check-lists galore, you might still have a nagging sense that’s something’s wrong.

Here’s why:

Writing Down Your Goals Isn’t Magic

At some point, you’ve almost certainly been told to write down your goals. The theory goes that because you’ve put something down on paper, you’re going to be much more committed to it than if you’d just thought about it.
The truth is, there’s not a huge amount of actual research on this. In fact, the key oft-cited study (variously attributed to a group of Harvard and a group of Yale students) appears to be fictitious – Sid Savara has a great debunking of it on his blog:

Sometimes the study references a Harvard class of 1979, and sometimes a Yale class of 1953.  …  The premise and results were always the same.  Either this was a reproducible experiment, or something was a little fishy.

(Sid Savara, Fact or Fiction? The Truth About The Harvard Written Goal Study, SidSavara.com)

You  could sit down for an hour and write a huge list of goals: it’s easy to jot down everything we think we should do. But simply writing something down is no magic bullet.

I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I’ve come across a list of written goals – big or small – that simply haven’t happened. My old journals and diaries are full of them. The act of writing something down can be helpful, but it’s not magic.

Arbitrary Goals Won’t Work

So why aren’t written goals working? A key problem is that we have a tendency to construct impressive lists of spurious “goals” which we don’t really care about. Here’s one from the lovely Naomi Dunford:

Here’s an actual sample of the things on my actual 100 Things To Do list from an actual (very good but sadly, I think, out of print) book:

1. Get driver’s license.

2. Get glasses.

3. Crochet a whole blanket.

4. File my taxes.

5. Get divorced. Finally.

6. Buy a Waterman pen.

7. Get personalized stationery.

8. Learn how to cook.

9. Get up to date on all my bills.

10. Buy car?

(Naomi Dunford, How to Set Unstupid Goals, IttyBiz)

Naomi goes on to explain the problems with each of these goals – traps which a lot of us fall into when we’re setting our own goals:

• Some are completely unexciting (e.g. “file my taxes”, “get up to date on all my bills”)
• Some are goals that she felt she should have (e.g. “get driver’s license”)
• Some aren’t really goals at all (“learn how to cook” – how do you know when you’re done?)
• Some involve settling for second-best (“buy a waterman pen”)

In the end, there are only a couple of goals on that top ten list which Naomi really cared about: “crochet a whole blanket”, and “get personalized stationery”.

The only gurus I can think of which would possibly include those as great goals are The Etiquette Grrls (I have both their books, they’re hilarious). The point is, Naomi picked those goals because she actually wanted to do them. Which, surely, should be what goals are all about?

What Do You Really Care About?

So the best place to start when goal-setting is to ditch the “should” and choose a few things you care about. My big three aims for this year are:

• Getting married
• Finishing the novel I’m writing
• Continuing to build up my business

None of those are goals which I need to write down. I’m hardly going to get to September and suddenly think “Oh yeah, I’m getting married in a week’s time, and I forgot to do anything about that. Oops.” I’m not going to wake up one morning having forgotten all about my novel. I’m definitely not going to sit around all day, every day, wondering what I’m supposed to be doing, only to belatedly remember that I’ve got a small business to run.

Have you got any goals like that? Perhaps you wouldn’t even describe them as “goals” – they’re just what you really want to do. Maybe you’re working on a cool project, designing a website, writing a book, redecorating your house, raising a family, or doing something else awesome.

Don’t treat goal-setting as some exercise that you’ve “got” to do. Use it as a tool to help you narrow your focus in the areas which you really do care about.

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Image courtesy of: Julia Kim Smith/Shamim Momin, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria

‘Tempus fugit – time flies. Life is short. I can’t believe another year’s gone by…’

People say all sorts of things about time, usually about how little of it they have. Many of us genuinely lead busy lives and do find it hard to fit everything in – work, family, hobbies, exercise. But leading a happy and fulfilled life and achieving all our goals does require the skill of handling our time well. Time is a resource and must be managed.

Keep a record of what you are doing with your time.

Keeping a proper record of what you’re doing is a really important first step in managing your time and hence being more productive. When I tried this for myself, it turned out that there were vast swathes of my time that weren’t being used productively at all. Although I always regarded myself as having no time and being far too busy to do any more than I was already doing, in fact there was plenty of time spent on pretty meaningless things such as watching TV, surfing the Internet (not in a productive way), or just lying around.

What I found was that, in fact, I had plenty of time to spare. It’s all a matter of priorities – if you really want to do something, there is time. You just need to find it. Keeping a record of where your time is going will help you to do this. You could be amazed by just how much time you do have!

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”
- Harvey MacKay

Use your time more creatively

Do you spend a lot of time traveling? What do you do with that one hour daily commute to work? How about when you’re sitting in an airport departure lounge, or when you’re waiting for a train, or sitting in Starbucks waiting for a friend?

Times like this can be used more constructively. I generally carry a bag around with me and the bag will contain a book or two, usually something with a self improvement theme.

Haven’t got time to do affirmations? I thought I had this problem until I realized that I had at least one shower every day and usually two, so instead of just daydreaming randomly through this time, I started to spend it saying my affirmations.

Don’t let routines rule your life. If you usually go the gym after work but you need to work late one day, you could go early in the morning or at lunchtime, or even late at night. Maybe you could go to a different gym that’s nearer your work. My own job is very busy and unpredictable, but I still manage to get the gym three times a week (almost) without fail.

Enjoy what you are doing

In other words, live in the moment. Don’t rush from one thing to another. Just take your time and do whatever you’re doing as well as you can before moving on to the next thing. Multitasking is a myth – you’re doing things in rapid succession, but you’re flicking your attention quickly from one thing to another and, in the process, doing everything less well. I have learned through experience that multitasking is a sure fire way to become exhausted and be less productive.

Give yourself a break

You need down time. You can’t be doing ‘productive’ activities all the time. So it’s really important that you take some time to get away from all that productivity. But make sure this is really good, quality time. Watching TV is not a good way to relax – it’s too stimulating and, depending on what you’re watching, it can make you feel terrible! Randomly browsing the Internet is also not a good idea, and nor is spending time on Facebook, MSN, ICQ or playing computer games.

Try to find something that’s genuinely relaxing – having lunch with a friend, listening to a relaxing CD or some affirmations. It’s also important to get enough sleep.

Getting proper down time for yourself will actually make you more productive. I read a really interesting story recently about someone who conducted a productivity study of workers carrying large, heavy materials. The managers were getting the laborers to work flat out all day with only the minimum number of breaks allowed. Obviously, they thought that rest time was wasted time. The consultant brought in for the study decided to carry out a trial – half of the workers would carry on as usual, and the other half would take longer and more frequent rests. The managers were skeptical, but the second group ended up shifting four times more material than the first group, despite spending more time resting.

The moral of the story is obvious – we need to rest or else we will tire out and become unproductive.

Time can be your friend rather than your enemy. But you have to make it so. As with everything in life, the key is in being proactive.

Mark Harrison writes for a number of self development sites, including his own, EffortlessAbundance. Check out his latest book, Thirty Days to Change Your Life.

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