5 steps to escape the Ill start tomorrow trap

5 steps to escape the Ill abflug tomorrow trap5 steps to escape the Ill start tomorrow trapYouve probably heard something similar to the following phraseIts better to spend 5 minutes per day learning a new language than 5 hours once per month.Its better to do anything daily than sporadically. If you do something daily, your chances of mastering it are very high. The challenge (and the hidden benefit) is that tzu siche are only 24 hours in a single day. This 24-hour constraint will force you to decide what really matters to you.What are you serious about?What are you working on?When it comes to your own goals or dreamsAre you like the person who studies a new language 510 minutes per day?Or are you like the person who studies a new language for an hour or two here and there?If youre like most people, youre the latter. And if youre like most people, that means youre bedrngnis making very much progress.Life is extremely busy. It can be tough strategically fitting other things into your daily schedule when you have a job, family, and other responsibilities. However, if you dont fit your big dreams into your daily schedule, you probably wont achieve them. Or in the least, you wont achieve them in a timely fashion.This article is leid for people who are fine achieving big things once or twice in their lifetimes. Instead, this article is for people who want to achieve several big things every single year.If you learn to prioritize your life and your time, then you can do several big things on an annual basis. When you develop consistency, you also develop momentum. With momentum comes confidence and increased motivation. With confidence and increased motivation comes inspiration and bold ideas. If youre not consistent, then youre missing out on all of the psychological benefits that ripple into a life of success.Your daily routine is the clearest indicator of where youre going.The trap of believing you need big chunks of timeWhen it comes to big goals or projects - such as starting a business, writing a book, cleaning the garage, etc. - its easy falling into the trap of only working on it when you have a 3+ hour chunk of time.I myself fell into this trap. Im nearing the completion of my PhD in Organizational Psychology and only have my dissertation to complete. But a dissertation is a really big, complex, and challenging project. It felt so big that I didnt feel I could work on it for just 1020 minutes at a time. I felt like it took an hour just to get into it.That premise resulted in me regularly going weeks (sometimes months) without touching it. Its taken far longer than it has needed to complete. I have learned from sad experience the truth of Meredith Willsons words, You pile up enough tomorrows, and youll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.Once I made working on my dissertation a parte of my daily schedule, and worked on it like I was learning a new language - just 1530 minutes per day - I started making huge progress. I began caring about it mora. I got more motivated and excited to do well. I went from push motivation, where it took willpower to work on it, to pull motivation, where I intrinsically wanted to do it. I began finding more pockets of time to squeeze it in.Heres the 5-step process and how it worksEstablish clear priorities of what you truly want to do (it must fit into your daily schedule, or its probably not a huge priority)Design your daily routine to ensure you get it done optimallyUse the Pomodoro Technique - where you work for a set period of time without any distractionsReport your progress immediately after youve completed your sessionHave a weekly reflection where you assess your progress and make future plansEstablish clear prioritiesI fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. - Bruce LeeWhat do you really care about?What do you really want to do?If you cannot fit something into your daily sc hedule, its probably not that important to you. Because just like learning a new language, you dont need more than 15-30 minutes per day.If you cant find 15-30 minutes per day, then youre not serious.If you do something consistently, even for a few minutes every day, it will start to become a bigger part of your life. In the book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy explains that small habits done repeatedly over a long enough period of time experience exponential results.If you do something repeatedly, eventually it starts to get momentum. Its like pumping a water-well. It takes some time to get going. But once you get going, you start getting pulled forward.You can get momentum doing something 15 minutes per day.Overtime, youll start to develop competence at what youre doing. When you increase in your competence and consistency, youll develop fare more confidence.As your confidence, motivation, and momentum increase, youll become more passionate and excited about what youre doing. Y oull make more time for it. Youll become more successful at it.Design your daily routineEat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. - Mark TwainThe bookends of your day are your evening and morning. unterstellung are the times that you need to learn to optimize. Most people waste their evenings in a state of subconscious self-sabotage - usually distracting themselves with unhealthy food and mind-numbing technology.According to eMarketers latest report, US adults spend more than 12 hours daily consuming information on the internet.Thats more than half the dayYou probably have WAY more time than you think. The problem for most people is that they have no clue how much time they actually waste.Heres the thing about time - if something becomes important to you, youll find the time. A few years ago, my friend Benny and his wife, Nicole, were trying to convince Nicoles mom that she should watch the show, 24, with them. She told th em she had no time to fit it in. They convinced her to watch just one episode with them. She got hooked and started watching hours of 24 every single day. For the next few weeks, whenever Benny and Nicole would go to Nicoles parents house, they would find her mom glued to 24.I guess she figured out how to fit it in. Who knows what other priorities in her life disappeared as a result. But life went on.Even if you are legitimately extremely busy, which we all feel that we are, you can find 15-30 minutes daily to work on your goal. Your evening and morning routine are your best bet.The first thing you do in the morning is reflective of how the rest of your day will go. If you start right, your chances of continuing to have a solid day are very high.One of the 7 habits of Highly Effective people (that one book that sold over 25 million copies), is to put first things first.Does this mean you may have to wake up 30-60 minutes earlier than youre used to for a while? Does it mean its somet imes going to suck pulling yourself out of bed? Does it mean youll want to jump right back in bed?Absolutely.But it also means youre going to experience an incredible amount of satisfaction that you didnt used to have in your life.I often wake up at 5 AM to work on my goals before my three kids wake up at 6. Until about 507, Im really tempted to get back in bed. Many times, I have gotten back in bed.However, by 511 or so, Im starting to feel pretty good. By 559, Im really glad I got up. I have far more energy than I had when I woke up. I may not have made a huge dent in my goals. But I took a few steps forward. I put first things first. And now Im ready to see my kids. And you know what? They are going to interface with a parent who has self-esteem and confidence.Use the Pomodoro TechniqueThe Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s.The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.These intervals are named pomodoros, the plural in English of the Italian word pomodoro (tomato), after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student.You dont have to do 25-minute focus sessions. You can do 10-minute sessions. Or you can do 90-minute sessionsThe point is, you give yourself a timer and you work in complete focus until that timer is done. Once the timer goes off, you can take a break.Most people will immediately jump into their digital addiction, such as Facebook, for their break. Thats completely fine. Give yourself a small victory for being focused.However, as you become better and more serious about what youre doing, youll realize just how important recovery is for your wertzuwachs. As such, youll want your recovery to actually be restful and rejuvenating. Social media is mind-numbing, for sure, but it certainly isnt rejuvenating.Commit to a certain amount of time that youll focus on your goal each day. If its 10 minutes, then give yourself a 10-minute timer. Once that timer goes off, be done.Its very important that you stop when you say you were going to stop. Chances are, youll feel very excited for having done even 10 minutes of focused work on something youve been procrastinating for a long-time. In your excitement, you may be tempted to do another 20 or 30 minutes. If you do, then youll create an unsustainable expectation for yourself the next day.Just do your pomodoro - whatever timeframe you give yourself. Once you finish, be done.Then do it tomorrow.And the next day.And the next.Get consistent and if you find time to squeeze another pomodoro into your day, then do another. But stick with your initial morning pomodoro.Do it every day and eventually youll start to experience the compound effect. Eventually, youll start to develop competence and thus confidence. Youll get momentum and motivation.Your priorities will begin to shift. Like Nicoles mom, youll find more time. Youll delet e more of the non-essential distractions from your day. Your day will become increasingly filled with things that truly are priorities that reflect the future you want to embody.Because your days will become increasingly high quality and congruent, your life will become better and more successful. Youll begin looking and living different from the norm. Indeed, to be normal or average is to not have clear priorities. Being average means you havent put first things first. Normal means you dont have momentum or confidence or clarity.Overtime, youll get far more effective during your pomodoro-time. Youll develop routines and strategies for getting as much done in 3060 minutes as used to take several hours. Youll have a pre-performance routine for immediately putting you into a flow-state, so that youre doing deeper and deeper work.Report your progress immediatelyWhen performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement ac celerates. - Thomas MonsonIf you dont have someone youre reporting your progress to, then you havent designed your life for optimal productivity. Accountability is essential for success.You want to have someone meaningful who you report your progress to. This could be a friend or accountability partner or mentor or coach.Every morning after you complete your pomodoro - you send a text message or email saying Done. Or, if you want to add a little more detail, you could provide a few sentences, paragraphs, or bullets explaining how it went.In any case, you not only want to track your progress, but you want to report it. If you track and report your progress, it will improve.Have a weekly reflectionI think of the learning process of an undulation of deep learning and periods of surfacing and reflection. - Josh WaitzkinAt the end of each week, it is powerful to have a reflection period. Take 10-20 minutes and reflect on your week. How did it go?- - - Did you actually work toward your goal every single day?What came up during your week that you hadnt anticipated?Do you need to get up a few minutes earlier?Are there things in your daily schedule you need to shuffle around to become more effective?Are there activities or behaviors you could delete from your life to make more room for this growing priority?What goals should you set for yourself this week, based on your experience belastung week, for this goal?Should you work at it an extra 10-15 minutes daily?How can you ensure your time is most effective during your daily pomodoro?- - - Those questions were simply prompts to get your mind going. Every week, you should be taking a few minutes to reflect on where youre at. Thats a huge part of the learning process. You take a step back and examine how things are going so you can correct and perfect your process.Each week, you should be getting better and more effective at what youre doing.Each week, you should be getting more momentum and motivation - more compet ence and more confidence.Each week, you should be clearer on your priorities, and deleting the distractions from your life that are simply that, distractions.ConclusionYou cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. - Greg McKeown, in Essentialism The Disciplined Pursuit of LessSuccess isnt as hard as it appears. Its not that far away. Success simply requiresPrioritizationPlanningExecutionAccountabilityReflection and improvementIf youve been stuck in the past and havent made much progress on your dreams or goals, you need to make it a part of your daily life.When it becomes something you do daily, you can be sure that youll begin making progress. Eventually, your progress will turn into enormous momentum. Eventually, your whole life will change as you become clearer on your priorities.As you become clearer on your priorities, your standards for yourself will improve. Youll stop justifying low-level distractions to take up huge portions of your time. As a result, your time will be invested far better. And as your time gets invest rather than spent, youll become more successful and happier.Moreover, as you get better with time, you wont be content having moments of quality mixed with moments of self-defeat. Youll begin stacking quality habits together - such as exercising and journaling in addition to focusing on your goals. When you begin stacking quality habits, your results will compound even more. Youll get more bang for your buck from each solid habit you cultivate.Ready to upgrade?Ive created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change quickly.Get the cheat sheet hereThisarticlefirst appeared on Medium.