The Secret to Beating Procrastination

I have mentioned TED talks a number of times previously. I think the TED videos are a fabulous resource (imagine getting a series of experts to talk enthusiastically about their field of expertise). One of my New Year's Resolutions is going to be to watch more TED talks.

I happened to watch a few of them last night. And one of them struck me particularly.

Mel Robbins talked about the secret to getting the things you want in this talk.

Now she didn't talk about the Law of Attraction, or visualisation, or "intelligent dumbing down", "positive affirmation", or "mindfulness", or "neuro-linguistic programming".

She said the secret it simple. It is two words: "Force Yourself".

When I heard it, it was as if I had finally heard the answer to a question I had been asking for years. There is no secret. There is no magic. There are no easy answers. You need to become your own parent.

I read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" years ago. I was hopeful that it would contain the key for me. And it certainly told me how to maintain a list of things to get done. So I became really good at getting things onto my list. But it didn't really help me with getting things (particularly unpleasant things) off my list.

Now, to be frank, I didn't like Mel's presentation style. And I didn't think I would enjoy or get anything from the video. But I was wrong. If, like me, her approach rubs you the wrong way, then (if procrastination is a problem for you) I would encourage you to persevere and watch the whole video. It was the most worthwhile 22 minutes I have spent on the web in some time!


I would like to be able to say, at this point in my posting, that seeing Mel's video has changed my life. But it has only been a few hours to be honest. So I'll have to revisit this in a future posting. But I can say that the evidence of the first few hours has been very positive.

Here is a slide from her deck which sums up the whole message:

TED - Adding 10 years to your life

I mentioned TEDx in a previous posting but I have never mentioned TED directly.

TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design" and the site is full of videos of talks which are generally intriguing and sometimes inspiring. There is also a nice app for Android (and iPhone too, I imagine) which allows you to watch the videos from anywhere.

The talk I am referring to in this posting was given by Jane McGonigal.

In the talk she says that games can improve the quality of life. Further, she says that you can introduce the principles of games into your ordinary life to recover from illness or injury, or to introduce improvements which will actually extend your lifespan!

I encourage you to watch the video.

Then try to use Jane's instructions to improve your "resilience" in the following areas (through "power-ups"):

• Physical - never sit still for more than an hour
• Mental - tackle tiny tasks to exercise your willpower "muscle"
• Emotional - have 3 "positive" emotions for each negative one (look at baby animals!)
• Social - friends, family, community, gratitude

Here is a link to Jane's website and here is a still of Jane from her talk:

Stephen Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Last week, on the 16th of July to be precise, Stephen Covey passed away at the age of 79.

He was the author of a number of books, the most famous being The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.




To remind us all, here is a list of those 7 habits:

• Be Practive
• Begin with the End in Mind
• Put First Things First
• Think Win/Win
• Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the Saw

A fantastic book and a fantastic legacy.

Inspirational words: Yesterday is history...

My favourite inspirational saying is:

Yesterday is history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift
That is why we call it the present.

It's clever and it's important. And it rhymes too (well, parts of it!)

I'd like to be able to credit it to credit it to someone but apparently the origin is unclear. People to whom it has been ascribed (Alice Morse Earle, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joan Rivers, Babatunde Olatunji, Bil Keane, Elvis Stojko) are probably just quoting earlier sources.

There is speculation that the last line was added later. That seems like a possibility. The last line only works in English obviously!

It has become so well know that it made an appearance in Kung Fu Panda:


But even though it has appeared in a cartoon, I still think has something important to say.

Limitless

Watched the movie Limitless starring Bradley Cooper the other day.

Really enjoyed it.

But as well as being enjoyable, I found it thought provoking.

Firstly it is interesting to try to imagine what the impact will be when we have a pill that will make us more intelligent, or more charismatic, or something similar. Will it become widely available? Will it be expensive? What will happen to people who can’t afford it?

Sport is already blighted by performance-enhancing drugs. The reaction is to have mandatory testing and to penalise those who are caught using. Could something similar be applied? Will people be tested for performance-enhancing drugs when taking a test, during a job interview, appearing on a quiz show?

Secondly it makes you wonder how your own life would be affected if you could improve your own performance. I’m not talking here about using the other 90% of your brain (the theory that we only use a small proportion of our brains is a myth apparently). But I am talking about improving our focus, or our attitude, or simply trying harder.

We may not be able to use more of our brains at any one time. But we could use our brains more often! So we could trade time spent in front of the TV, or surfing the web, for time spend in a more productive pursuit.

Bill Cullen (Irish entrepreneur and motivational speaker/writer) in his book Golden Apples (subtitled “Six Simple Steps to Success”) does not extoll the virtues of searching for a performance-enhancing drug. But he does recommend (among many other things) that people cut the time they spend sleeping down to 6 hours a night (he says that he only needs 5 hours of sleep himself). And you then divert the extra time into being successful. He suggests that this can be done by taking 2 minutes off your alarm clock every week over a period of 2 years.

I must give that a try.

Dreams

Really enjoyed this recording of a talk by Judymay Murphy at a previous TEDx in Tallaght.

While the topic of the presentation is ostensibly related to "failure" it is in fact mostly about the power of dreams.

I'm pretty sure she doesn't mention the "Law of Attraction" during her talk but, from my understanding of it, that is the backdrop.

I am not sure that I believe completely in the Law of Attraction but I do believe that it is difficult to arrive somewhere nice without planning your route or at least having an idea where you're going.

A lot of people have understandable difficulty in believing that visualising good things and being positive and open will make good things happen. But strangely it is much easier to accept that visualising bad things and having a poor attitude is likely to invite bad things into your like. Strange isn't it?