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Achieving Your Goals – Negative Motivation VS Positive Motivation

When it comes to motivation, it can be broken down into two categories: negative motivation and positive motivation. Negative motivation is "push" motivation… you are trying to push something you don't like away from you. Positive motivation is "pull" motivation… you are trying to bring something that you DO want closer to you.

Each has an area where, generally speaking, it is more effective. Negative motivation is good for getting you started, for getting that initial movement that is often the hardest part to achieve. It does not, on the other hand, last all that well. Positive motivation is just the ticket for that… positive motivation can be a lifelong thing, but in general is not as great for getting the first sparks together to "light your fire".

Negative Motivation

Negative motivation is very good for getting you moving. It provides a sharp stimulus that is congruent with out instincts… that thing is unpleasant, get away from it. Our instincts don't make a distinction, in this case, between physical unpleasantness and mental unpleasantness… either way, our instinct is just to get away.

This can work very well… if your doctor tells you that you have cancer, and that unless you do what they say you are going to die, that provides some really strong motivation to change your ways and do what they say. The motivation is sharp, strong, and focused… do what you need to (what the doctor tells you) in order to avoid something unpleasant (dying of cancer). Since motivation is linked to action by way of a cost/benefit ratio, you can see that the cost (doing what the doctor tells you) is very low in comparison to the benefit (not dying).

Negative motivation has a very definite weakness, however. It can be quite strong, enough to get you moving when other things wouldn't, but what happens when you take the negative stimulus away? The motivation dries up almost instantly.

In other words, once you feel like you are safe from whatever the unpleasantness was, there is no more motivation from that source, though you may keep up whatever changes you have made out of habit.

Positive Motivation

Positive motivation is generally not quite as good at getting you moving. The natural instinct to avoid unpleasantness is not triggered, thus leaving you without the added boost that brings. Even if there is something you really, REALLY want, unless the path from here to there is pretty obvious, there may be some doubt, some fear, about your ability to achieve that thing, making it harder to get started.

On the other hand, positive motivation doesn't necessarily have a defined end, either. If you lose weight because your doctor tells you that you have to or suffer some really unpleasant problems, then once you lose enough weight, that motivation goes away. If you lose weight because you want to feel more fit and healthy, however, that motivation doesn't really go away. You're still going to want to feel fit and healthy, even after you've achieved your original goals.

Positive motivation gets stronger as you go along. Seeing progress toward your goal, whatever it may be, reinforces your positive motivation at the same time that it weakens your negative motivation… after all, you're getting closer to your thing you want (positive, or "pull" motivation) and farther from the thing you want to avoid (negative, or "push" motivation). Positive motivation can also help you conserve momentum when moving to a new goal after completing your current one.

Summary

The trick of motivating yourself is to know how to combine the two, and which to use when. Negative motivation is good for getting started, which is why many people who speak about reaching your goals will tell you to share your goals and time frames with someone else. This induces the negative motivation of not wanting to look bad in front of that person. That can range from a medium to a very strong negative motivation. At the same time, however, it makes you start framing the way you look at your goal in terms of that negative light. This can lead to you looking for ways to avoid both working on the goal and the person with whom you shared that goal.

That's where positive motivation comes into play. Once negative motivation gets you moving, you can start to see your progress toward your goal, which helps to strengthen your positivel motivation into a force that can support further progress. As you make more progress, and the end point (your goal) becomes clearer, positive motivation becomes even stronger, getting to the point where it can really drive you to the next goal once the current one is achieved… as long as you don't slow down too much. Once you slow down, you may need the kick from negative motivation once again.

So… that's a really simple look at the differences between negative motivation and positive motivation. Do you find that you use one more than the other? Will you change how you attempt to reach new goals after thinking about the difference? Let me know in the comments.

Author

October 10th

Energy, Feed Your Mind, Goals, Motivation, Perseverance, Planning, Polarity

Discard Your Life And Find The Real You

What is the real you? What is it that makes up the true you, what belongs to you and only you? What do you get when you see past the surface, past the anger and fear, "love" and betrayal, hurt, pain, and even agony? The real you… the deep you, the you that is beyond what the surface you can even imagine.

When you are born, you have no concept of your "self". As you grow older, you build up a structure, a belief system, a framework of lenses and mental maps through which you see the world. You are told, and you believe, that this framework is you. The framework gets covered with experiences and emotions, and even the spaces between the beams of the support structure get filled up eventually. You go on about your life with the belief that this giant amalgamation is you.

Everyone else around you believes this, too. Only what they think of as you isn't even the structure you have built up… it's only the surface of that structure, a surface that changes constantly as new experiences, new emotions, and new everything else piles up, sometimes stripping off pieces of the old coverings, but more often simply piling over them, making them part of the inside, and making that structure ever harder to discard.

As you go about, identifying more and more with this framework that you've built, some of it intentional construction, most of it not, you build walls, walling off this portion from that portion. You do this to protect yourself, to keep yourself from getting hurt, but that's not what they do, it's only what you fool yourself into believing they do. Because those walls don't keep things out, they keep things in.

That's right… you're building yourself a prison. A prison inside a structure that is built of the giant ball of stuff that you call your life. And you not only build this prison, you voluntarily stick yourself inside of it, trapping yourself in with all the pain and injuries that you have suffered over the years. And to top it off, the prison that you build, and trap yourself inside, can't ever even fulfill the purpose for which you supposedly built it… it can't even keep out new pain!

That's right… you build up this structure of falsehoods, lies told to yourself, walling yourself in to keep out the pain, and it doesn't even work. The walls only function in one direction… they hold things in. They hold you in… they limit you to far, far below your true abilities. They keep the pain that you have experienced close to you, so that it can continually injure you and prevent you from healing. What do you do when the pain builds, when it gets harder and harder to deal with? You build more walls, and build the walls you have higher!

The walls that you build for yourself are a prison… but they're also an illusion. They are part of the framework that you have built up, an integral part as a matter of fact. But here's the thing: that framework isn't you.

That's right, all those lenses and perceptions and mental maps, all those experiences and emotions, those hatreds and angers and fears… they aren't you. They're a tiny little pimple that you've built up on the surface of the real you. All that stuff that you're trying to protect, the part that hurts, the part that knows pain and fear and suffering… that is only the very smallest fraction of you. It's like looking at a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, and calling that the ocean.

The real you is vast. It is deep, and strong, and powerful. It cannot be hurt by the vagaries of this life, because it is only the tiniest fraction of it that is involved with this life. Your physical presence, and the structure that you have built up, are merely the tiny portion of it paying attention to what you perceive as your whole life. And when you identify yourself as that tiny portion, you are giving up the vastness of the real you, like identifying yourself as your pinky.

Your walls you have created are illusions, but they are self-maintained illusions, given the power that you are drawing through your connection to the real you. Want evidence that what I'm saying is right? It's very easy to obtain… all you have to do is let down one, just one, of your walls. You will immediately feel closer to that vastness that is the real you. And with each wall that you release, you will find yourself closer to that reality.

When you get close, you may be scared by the openness, the sheer open expanse that you feel drawing nearer. After all, for all of your life that you can remember, you have lived inside your walls. You may never have even had a moment's clarity, an opening of the mind's eye to see the vastness around you. If you HAVE had one of those moments, you may be even more scared, because you have an inkling of what it's like.

It's not an empty vastness, though… you aren't alone. In fact, when you reach that vastness, you'll find that you are connected to everyone and everything else, with a deepness of connection that the very word connection doesn't seem strong enough to convey the reality of what you feel. You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

It's sometimes hard to keep this connection to the real you… it's easy to forget and focus back on the surface structure, identifying with that structure that you've built up. Once you've let the feeling go long enough, in fact, it's hard to remember what it was like… until something triggers it again, and then it all comes rushing back.

There is an old movie called Dune. They made a newer version of it, too, but I'm talking about the original. In it, there is a phrase that is repeated a few times: "The sleeper must awaken." I have always identified with this phrase… I've always felt like it meant something to me, something more. I've felt like there was something bigger slumbering inside me.

Lately, as I have read, and learned, and written, and looked inside of me, my awareness has gradually expanded, and the phrase has changed, in my mind, to "The sleeper is awakening." I felt that bigger thing inside of me stirring from its slumber, starting to uncoil.

Tonight, as I was talking to my wife to help her relax, something clicked. Sometimes the greatest words of wisdom come when the conscious mind gets the hell out of the way and lets things flow from far deeper inside. Suddenly, that thing that had slowly been awakening came aware. The sleeper has awoken.

This connection, this deeper you, is your connection to God, to the awareness that created, and contains, and in a way is, the universe. But it is being "consciously" (too small a term, I think) aware of that connection, not in some sort of vague "God created the Heavens and the Earth" kind of way. It is an intimate and strong connection, a direct connection. It is deep, wordless communication flowing back and forth, much of which, to this point at least, seems to be more of an "I am here" message and an "I know" response flowing from each direction.

This vastness is inside each of us… in fact, it IS each of us. We are not the limited lives reflected in the world we live in, we are not even the conscious part of our minds… we are far more than that. But in order to find our true selves, we must first give up the structure that have built up, that we have defined as "us"… and that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do. That last wall, the one that separates us from our true selves, the one that is the foundation of support for our whole framework of our lives, is really, really hard to let go. It is giving up the "you" that you have always known, for a great unknown.

Do not be afraid. The whole world will change before your eyes, leaving nothing unaltered. Once you let go of that last wall, and the fear, there will be no doubt, however.

It's worth it.

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Beliefs, Body/Mind Relationship, Communication, Conscience, Energy, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Internal Quiet, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Relationships

I Need Your Help

I Need Help

I need your help with something. I set a goal, quite some time back, of reaching 100 subscribers. As you can see if you look near the top left corner of this page, I've reached that goal. I was talking about this fact with my wife last night, and she asked me what my next goal would be. I had already thought about this, of course, so it didn't take me long to answer: 500 subscribers.

Now here comes the part where I need your help: She told me that she wanted that as an anniversary present. My anniversary is November 20th, or less than two months away. My subscriber count HAS nearly quintupled over the last six weeks, going from around 22 to, as of last time I looked, 104. If I continued that trend, I WOULD be able to give my wife the present she asked for.

On the other hand, increasing my subscribers by 82 over 6 weeks is a very different thing than increasing it by 396, even if the percentages are similar. The only way I can think of to reach that count is if I get linked by bigger bloggers. So, this is where I need help: If you are one of the bigger bloggers I link to in this article, and you check your links, if you find something of interest on my site (and I'll provide a choice or two I think might interest you), please help me and link to it.

If you are one of my normal readers, and have a blog of your own, I would appreciate any link from you, as well… any link can bring readers, who can then become subscribers if they so choose. Or, if you happen to be reading this and know someone who might be interested in linking to my content to help me give my wife her present, let them know. I know I'm unlikely to send enough traffic to any of these links to get the attention of a blog of any size, so I'm hoping they watch who links to them, and if not, that we can contact them by other means and get them to participate.

Okay, so all of that out of the way, here are some of the bloggers that I read, that have higher (mostly a LOT higher) traffic and subscriber count, and whom might be interested in content on this site:

ProBlogger - I read ProBlogger's content every day on how to improve your blog. I have a feeling he might be interested in How To Get 17158 Page Views for ProBlogger, or possibly The Eyes Of A Photographer for Digital Photography School.
Steve Pavlina – Steve Pavlina is the one who got me started with blogging, and I still read his stuff every time he puts it out. He might be interested in Believe It Or Not, Your Beliefs Affect The Physical World or Which One Runs Your Life – Love Or Fear?.
Henrik at The Positivity Blog – Henrik is a good blogger… I really like his articles and his writing style. He might be interested in The Truth Behind Falling – And Being – In Love, The Difference Between Intelligence And Education, or 8 Ways To Put Procrastination Off Until Tomorrow.
John Place – I've been reading John's stuff since I first got started blogging. He started at about the same time as me, just a month earlier, but has already gotten over 1,600 subscribers. He might be interested in How To Reclaim Your Life From Marketers, The Difference Between Intelligence And Education, or A Potentially Fatal Mistake.
LifeHack.org and LifeHacker.com – Two of the biggest blogs when it comes to the self-improvement niche… they also have a lot of tech content. They might be interested in How To Reclaim Your Life From Marketers or 8 Ways To Put Procrastination Off Until Tomorrow.
Peter at I Will Change Your Life – A blog smaller than the ones above, but growing rapidly… he recently reached the goal I'm working toward, 500 subscribers. He might be interested in The Truth Behind Falling – And Being – In Love or A Potentially Fatal Mistake.

This request is by no means limited to the people listed above… as I said above, if you know someone else who might be interested in my content, and willing to help me out, please feel free to contact them and give them the address of this website in general or this article in particular… in fact, here is a link that you can copy and paste for this article, in case you would like to pass it along: I Need Your Help at A Miracle A Day.

So… sorry to call in the good will of my readers, but I really do need help in order to give my wife the anniversary present she asked for, which, of course, I walked blindly into. Oh, and to any bloggers who read this, whether mentioned above or not, if you were to pass along this request, that would be much appreciated.

Author

September 27th

Blogging, Goals, Growth, Motivation, Off Topic

The Truth Behind Falling – And Being – In Love

Holding Hands

There is nothing like falling in love. Your whole self, body, heart, and mind, yearns for the person you are in love with. You want to be with them all the time, you wonder what they're doing or what they're thinking when you are not around them, and the whole world just seems like a better place. There's only one problem.

You can't, and won't, be falling in love forever. At some point, if you want to keep the relationship, you have to go from falling in love to being in love. If you're already at that point, you might want to read The Secret Killer Of Relationships or The Very SImple Secret To A Happy Marriage.

Falling In Love

Falling in love is the beginning (and can sometimes re-occur later, but I'll get to that)… it's that place where the other person, your significant other, can do no wrong. Everything about them is beautiful, fascinating, and you can't get enough of them. Any time your focus is not fully on something specific, your thoughts drift to the newly significant other in your life.

At this point, everything is new… every day together brings new revelations, new learning, which make you feel like you're getting more and more "inside" the other person. You let each other in deeper than the surface, and there is always a constant feeling of growing closer, an observable closing of the mental and emotional distance between the two of you.

That is a huge part of the greatness of falling in love… getting closer at a visible rate. It's also part of why it can't last forever. Eventually you are close enough that even as you grow closer, it's not as visible, and so it feels like you have stalled, or even like you are growing apart. When you are (bad, but understandable, analogy coming up) a mile apart, and you get 10% closer, that's a huge distance. When you are a foot apart, and you get 10% closer… that's a lot harder to see.

So does this mean that you have reached that point where you love each other, but you are no longer "in" love?

No… when you are growing closer at a very visible rate, that's the "falling" part of falling in love. When you are already close, and moving closer by inches (or even fractions of an inch, eventually), that's when it changes to being in love. It doesn't mean you're no longer in love, it just means that seeing results of your efforts, where you see the relationship grow, is not as easy, and so you need to find other sources of motivation as well.

Being In Love

Being in love is where it starts taking conscious involvement to keep the "in love" part without the falling. Now, instead of falling in love, you need to start being in love. You will have to go out of your way to keep yourself in your partner's thoughts (and make sure that they stay in yours!). If you don't go out of your way, it won't mean anything.

What does it mean to "go out of your way"? Going out of your way can mean different things to different people, but the important thing is that you are devoting the two things that you can't possibly acquire more of to them. What two things? Time and attention… you can't get more time and you have only a limited amount of attention to invest during the time you do have. Giving time and attention, therefore, is the universally recognized way to convey someone's (or something's) importance to you.

When you are falling in love, and everything is new, it's easy to devote an enormous amount of attention (and with it time) to your significant other. New things always have a draw on our attention… it's part of being human, and part of our survival instinct (you have to determine whether or not something new is a threat, after all). That's why it's also easier to stick with a new diet, or a new workout, or why you may find you love a new dish or a new restaurant. Once something (or in our case, someone) become familiar, however, it requires a conscious decision to dedicate mental energy (attention) to that thing (or, as I said, person).

When you combine that advantage of newness drawing our attention with the visibly growing closeness of the relationship, it makes giving more attention to the relationship a no-brainer. It doesn't require much in the way of conscious effort, because not only is your subconscious driving you to make sure this "new" thing is not a threat, but the rewards are blindingly obvious.

Once you get to the point of obviously diminishing returns, however, you start to notice that the same amount of effort doesn't move you the same amount closer. At the same time, the subconscious drive to categorize anything new as "threat" or "non-threat" fades away, leaving you with much less "drive" to devote attention to the relationship. Other things start to claim your attention, drawing it away from your significant other.

I mentioned earlier that your partner needs you to give two things in order to keep being in love, as opposed to just loving each other (the difference between soul mates and good friends). One was time, the other attention. Out of the two of these, time is the easiest to give, attention the most important.

Attention Is Money

Despite the phrase above, attention is far more important than money. Attention is the currency by which you show how much you value something. You've heard the saying "time is money" but time without attention means nothing. Whatever it is that you do, it's highly unlikely that they truly pay you for your time… they really pay for your attention across time. They pay you to write, to watch a security monitor, to serve burgers… whatever it is, they may pay you for the hours you do it, but if you don't "do it", whatever it is, you don't get paid.

This applies to relationships, too. Giving time without attention is sort of like leaving a seventeen cent tip at a restaurant… it lets the other person know that you didn't forget, you just didn't think they were worthy of more. It's insulting, whether done consciously, as with the tip, or subconsciously, as with spending time with your significant other without giving them your full attention.

When you give someone time, without attention, you are telling them that they are low on your priority list. It doesn't matter whether you intend for them to be or not… you are showing them, with your actions, that they are. You can show someone that they have your attention in many ways… communication is an extremely important one, but there is also buying them something (probably the least effective way), making them something (the more it reflects the fact that it is something YOU created, the better), or doing something with them (ie going out to dinner and/or a movie).

All of the ways listed above can show your attention, but if you don't show your mental involvement, show that you were thinking of them specifically, the value drops. For instance, when you buy something for your significant other, if you don't take the time to buy something that they specifically like (for instance buying roses when your wife prefers tulips), it loses some of its value… that doesn't mean it has no value, just less. The same goes for making them something… if you don't show that you were thinking about them when you made it, it loses some value. If you do something with them, and keep taking phone calls, it takes away some of the value.

Communication is a special case. By the very act of communicating, you are giving them some fraction of your attention. Different forms of communication show different amounts of attention, and also show how much of your attention the other person has to different degrees. Email, for instance, doesn't require much attention, or show how much attention the other person has, unless it's a long and involved email, which could STILL have been written across time, and thus be less of your attention. Instant messaging, on the other hand, still doesn't require a lot of attention, but shows how much of your attention the other person has a little better, because they can see how long you take to respond. Voice communication (ie a phone call) is better yet, as it requires more attention, and they can hear in your voice how much of your attention they have. An in-person meeting provides them with the most attention, and lets them read your body language as well to determine how much of your current attention they have.

The Difference

What it boils down to, then, is that the difference between falling in love and being in love is that you can't fall forever. Eventually you have to move from falling in love to being in love, from the easy part to the part which requires your conscious effort. It IS worth that effort, though… being in love still moves you closer, and still builds your relationship and love higher. It just exchanges speed for depth… it goes back and fills in all the little chinks that falling in love passed over.

You can also fall in love all over again. This usually happens when you let your partner slide from your attention for too long, and then something wakes you up to that fact. All of a sudden what was old and familiar is new and different. You close the gap that opened up between you, and now have that momentum to keep you going once you move back to being in love once again.

Again, falling in love is absolutely wonderful. It is an amazing experience, and one you will likely always remember. Being in love, though, has depth and duration that falling in love is not capable of producing.

Falling in love gets you to the starting line. Being in love is the rest of the race. And when you win at being in love, you win big.

Author

September 26th

Awareness, Communication, Energy, Growth, Motivation, Perseverance, Priorities, Relationships

How To Reclaim Your Life From Marketers

These days every waking moment is filled with someone trying to get you to do this, or buy that. They use all kinds of sophisiticated techniques, developed in a lab, tested in focus groups, and spread across the world you live in. You hear it on the radio when it goes off to wake you up, you see it on the billboards on the way to work, even on bumper stickers on the cars filling the freeway. Then you get it again when you get home and turn on the TV to relax.

Some of them want you to do something to make them money… that's probably the most common. Some of them, however, do it because they think that whatever it is that they want you to do will make you healthier, like the anti-smoking campaigns. Speaking of which, can't they hire someone to make ads that aren't so ineffective that they actually make me want to smoke, just because the ad is so bad (and I've never smoked in my life)? They all have something in common, however… they all want you to align your life with their desires.

They break out all the tools to try to get you to do this. They use guilt, they use peer pressure, they use sex… oh boy do they ever use sex. All of it is designed to bypass your conscious mind's ability to rationally evaluate a proposition. They don't want you to actually think about what it is they're pushing you to do, they want you to feel like you have to do it. If you want to get the hot girl, you have to go buy our product. If you want your kids to love you, you have to go to our amusement park. If you don't want to die young, you have to stop smoking.

That last one at least has the benefit of being likely to be true, though my great-grandfather lived until he was 93 while smoking every day. But true or not, they are trying to make you alter your life to follow their rules. Now comes my turn, of course… what am I trying to get you to do?

Nothing… well, to be honest, I want you to subscribe to my website (it's free!) . But that's not the point… I'm not going to try to push you to do it. What I'm suggesting is that you break away from mindless consumerism (<– buzzwords), and reclaim your life. Use your mind and actually think about why YOU should do whatever it is that someone is currently trying to get you to do. Why is it that you, personally, would want to do whatever it is that they are pushing?

Here are five things that you might want to do when you feel like someone is trying to push you into something:

Engage your mind

The most powerful tool in your arsenal, and what marketers and salesmen try to avoid, your conscious mind is capable of actually making rational decisions and choosing not to buy the new Mega Ultra Thingamabob when you already have the Thingamabob Max, and wouldn't use any of the features added to the new Mega Ultra, anyway. Or even worse, to them… you can realize you have no need for a Thingamabob at all.
Discard guilt as a motivator

Guilt is a terrible motivator, and one abused by some marketers. One of the worst ways they do this is through making you feel like you're depriving your children if you don't go here or buy them that. If you feel guilty when it comes to your children… spend more time with them! Buying them things and taking them to places where you still don't pay attention to them isn't going to help them. Marketers also try to work the guilt factor when it comes to your significant other… the answer is still the same: spend more time with them! When it comes to guilt about yourself, like fitness/weight loss, just remember… you don't need to look like or be like everyone else. If you're happy the way you are, who are they to tell you that you need to change?
Realize it doesn't really matter what everyone else is doing

Why do you care what everyone else is doing? What difference does it make to you? Are you that eager to "fit in", that you would go out of your way to do something just because other people are? I know the answer for some people is "Yes", but why? You are your own person, living your own life, making your own decisions… you are who you choose to be. Why would you choose to be someone else?
Understand that no matter how many times they imply it, no product gets you hot girls (or sex)

A HUGE number of products use the allure of sex to get you to do something or buy something. They do this by showing you hot girls and their product over and over again. Just remember… it doesn't matter how many times they show the product with some hot girl… having it won't get you that girl. It's highly unlikely to get you sex, even if you already have a significant other. Unless, of course, you're a guy, and you buy your significant other shoes and a purse… there's something about those things that girls LOVE.
Figure out if YOU really care, and if so, why

Finally, take a look and see if you really care about what it is they are pushing. For example, if a marketer is trying to use sex to sell something to you, and you're already married (hopefully happily), do you really care even if it WOULD get you a hot girl? You're already taken, after all. Do you really care if that new diet pill will make you lose a few pounds? And I mean YOU… do you care for yourself, not because of the way other people look at you? Does whatever it is they are trying to get you to do really reflect who you are?

These really apply even to conversation with your friends or coworkers, when they try to get you to do something, not just the now omni-present advertising. Make your life your own… do things on your own terms, because you WANT to do it. Reclaim your life and do things that reflect who you are and who you want to be, not what someone else thinks you should be.

Author

September 24th

Awareness, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Motivation, Relationships

8 Ways To Put Procrastination Off Until Tomorrow

Notepad - List

Ah yes, the joys of procrastination… putting off all the hard or unpleasant work that you need to get done until later. Then, when it all piles up until it's over your head, you feel overwhelmed, wondering how you managed to end up so deep in a mess and how to escape.

Some people seem to have a natural tendency toward procrastination, always putting off until tomorrow what could be done today. Others don't seem to have that issue. They don't seem to have any problem just getting right to work on something, even when it's very unpleasant to even think about. Those of us who fall into the first category can, however, take steps to deal with our "problem".

So, since you have a tendency to procrastinate (otherwise, why are you reading this article?), why not put it to work against itself? Here's some ways you can put off procrastinating until tomorrow.

Write A Daily Task List (DTL)

This one is relatively obvious, and you've probably heard it until you're sick of it… but any list of ways to help put off procrastination would be incomplete without it. All this requires is that each night you make a short list of things that need done (or worked on) the next day. Once you have your list, there are many other things that you can do with it.
Prioritize Your DTL By Importance

The first thing you can do is prioritize the list you created in #1 by importance. That way you can be sure that you will at least get the most important things accomplished, and you are likely to find that you get more than the first few things done, because you feel like you've gotten the important stuff out of the way and gotten something accomplished for the day. You may even find yourself on a roll, getting things done left and right.
Prioritize Your DTL By Difficulty

Your next choice is to prioritize your list by difficulty, putting the most difficult tasks first. This makes it so that you have the hardest work out of the way early, so that when you are more tired later in the day, you have only the easier tasks left, thus decreasing the chances that you will put a task off until tomorrow because it's too hard to finish in the time that you have left. Also, this particular method of prioritizing is even more likely to make you feel like you're "on a roll" than #2.
Prioritize Your DTL By Unpleasantness

This may be very heavily related to #3, as difficulty is a major factor in how unpleasant a task is… but it's not the ONLY factor. This means of prioritization has the advantage that as you complete your tasks, the remaining tasks are more and more things that you actually want to do, not things that you have to do. Also, like #3, you're less likely to have that really unpleasant task at the end of the day that you put off until the next day because you don't want to start it late.
Reward Yourself When You Complete Tasks Early

People have known for thousands of years that you train people, including yourself, through rewards and punishment. You reward behavior which you want to increase, and punish behavior you want to decrease. Since most procrastination has punishments built right in (like putting off paying your bills… not good for your credit, people come and shut off power, etc.), you are free to concentrate on the rewards side of the equation. The three easiest ways to do that are trewarding yourself for completing unusually difficult tasks, rewarding yourself for completing a longer-term task early (ie something that you expect to take a week and you finish in three days), and rewarding yourself for completing your DTL. Don't make the rewards too easy, or out of proportion, though, or they won't help you to train yourself… you have to feel like you earned whatever it is.
Post Your DTL Where You Will See It Regularly

This is especially good if you cross tasks off as you go, since it allows you to see your progress. It can be motivational to see a list of ten tasks with seven of them already crossed off, especially if it's still relatively early. Even if you don't have anything crossed off yet, having the list in a place where you see it can remind you of what you decided to do for the day if you get distracted.

Just as a note, the phrasing in that last sentence is important… always look at your list as what you decided to do, not what you "should" do. What you "should" do takes the element, the feeling, of choice out of it, which can leave you feeling resentful even if you made the list yourself. It's a list of tasks that you decided to do, not something forced on you by others.
Be Accountable To Someone Else For Your DTL

Just about everyone hates to feel stupid in front of someone else. If you let someone else read your DTL, and share your progress on that list with them at the end of the day, it provides a little more pressure to actually get things done, so that you don't feel like you have to stand there in front of them and tell them that you screwed around all day and didn't get anything on your DTL done. Don't let doing this make you feel like you have to put more things on your DTL just to impress them, though… the list is still for you, and you don't want to exhaust yourself trying to impress someone.

If you're in a relationship, your significant other is probably a good choice for this.
Do Things Instantly When Possible

This is really simple, and the thing that has helped me the most with my natural tendency to procrastination. This is completing tasks as soon as you can when you become aware that they need done. For example, you can pay your bills as soon as you get them in the mail. Or you can fix that chair with the wobbly leg NOW instead of waiting until the weekend (by which time you've probably become accustomed to procrastinating that task, which makes it easier and easier to continue doing so, while other tasks pile up behind it).

Your mental list of what needs done (not the same as your DTL) can become overwhelming when things pile up, making you want to hide behind one distraction after another. Completing tasks as soon as possible after you become aware of them keeps your mental list all cleared out, making you far less likely to feel overwhelmed, helping you to put off procrastinating.

Procrastination tendencies are incurable. They will be with you for the rest of your life (at least from what I have observed in other, and felt personally). Using the methods above, however, you can put procrastination off until tomorrow, and get things done today.

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September 18th

Goals, Motivation, Perseverance, Planning, Priorities, Timetables, Tips Tuesday

The Subconscious Mind In Control (AKA Habits)

What Habits Are

"Habit" is a word for an area where your subconscious mind controls your actions in the absence of input from your conscious mind. Most of your every day life is controlled by habits… you have a habit of breathing, sleeping, waking, etc. When most people talk about habits, though, they are referring to ones where you are aware of the habit but still relinquish control to your subconscious. Smoking, drinking, gambling… these are things where the decision to do it is made by your subconscious, and your conscious mind, while aware of what you are doing, is nothing but an observer.

There are two things you should know when looking at habits from this viewpoint. The first is that if your conscious mind involves itself, becoming more than an observer, it can break (or change) that habit. The second is that even if you do decide to make a change, but don't give regular attention to maintaining the change, you will allow that area to slip back to your subconscious mind's control. If you have established enough of a different pattern, that won't matter, because the subconscious will continue along the new pattern, but if you slip before that new pattern is set, your subconscious will go back to its old ways, and your habit will return.

Now let's get something straight… not all habits are bad. Taking a shower every day is a good habit, as are brushing your teeth, chewing with your mouth closed, and exercising. Smoking can even be looked at as a good habit, if the benefits outweight the costs… it's just that the costs for smoking are cumulative, and quite high over the long term, where the benefits are NOT cumulative, and only valuable over a very short term. So one person may consider something a bad habit, where another might consider the same thing neutral or even good.

How Habits Form

You form habits by repeating the same response, or a very similar response, to the same, or very similar circumstances. You form your habit of breathing by exhaling when your lungs are empty of oxygen and inhaling when they are empty of air. You form your habit of smoking by picking up a cigarette in certain situations, which can then expand if you start doing so in more situations. Doing something one time is seldom enough to form a habit… it usually requires tens, hundreds, or even thousands of repetitions.

Performing the same action in response to non-similar circumstances can peripherally reinforce a habit that is forming, but the impact is small. That is, if you have a habit of smoking first thing in the morning, and you smoke one at lunch time, that isn't really enough to expand the habit to smoking at lunch, and if you have smoked a few in the morning, then smoke one at lunch, it is unlikely to cement the habit of smoking in the morning, either.

How Habits Change

There are two kinds of change that can happen with a habit… replacement and removal. Replacing a habit is FAR easier than removing it.

When you replace a habit, what you do is change which action is fired when certain circumstances trigger a habit response from your subconscious. Basically, you have trained your subconscious to fire off a habit when certain circumstances arise. Replacing a habit simply points that trigger at a different habit, such as chewing gum instead of smoking. That's relatively easy, because all you're doing is choosing a different habit to fire, rather than trying to change the whole subconscious pattern of responding to those circumstances with a a habit.

Removing a habit is the other side of that coin… it is conditioning the subconscious to STOP responding to a certain set of circumstances by firing a habit trigger. This is mostly done by altering the way you perceive the set of circumstances. If you want to remove a habit of swearing, for example, you could train your subconscious to look at the circumstances where you would normally swear through a filter of "What if my baby was here?". Even this doesn't actually remove the habit trigger, though… it simply keeps your subconscious from seeing the set of circumstances that trigger it.

That last is why people who form a habit of smoking, then quit, can one day pick it up right where they left off. They changed their perception of the circumstances for the time where they quit, but then their perception goes back to, or close enough to, the old set that fire off that trigger. Abra cadabra… your habit is back!

The ability for "removed" habits to return is one more reason why replacing habits is more effective… even if that set of circumstances arises, it fires off the replacement habit, not the original. I haven't really looked into replacement FOLLOWED by removal… that might be a relatively effective technique, so that even if you backslide it's only to the replacement habit, not the original.

Conclusion

The reality is that if you want to alter a habit, the first thing you must do it become consciously aware of it. After you become aware, you have to make a conscious decision to change, and you'd better have motivation for the change, too (and internal sources of motivation are by far the strongest, most persistent sort). Then you can work on replacing the habit or removing the habit trigger.

Don't expect instant results when trying to change habits. Chances are pretty good that you'll have a fight on your hands for at least two weeks… often much longer. Just keep your focus on now, on the progress you have already made, the changes that you already have, not on the permanent change that is your goal… it'll make it much easier to stick with it.

The Secret To Motivating Your Subordinates

Stacks Of Gold Coins

Most companies, and most people, are clueless when it comes to motivating their employees to do their best. They think the key to motivating their employees is a combination of threats and rewards, with the rewards mostly consisting of salary and benefits.

That is actually about as inefficient for motivating people as you could come up with and still have employees. When you pay people by salary, you're paying them for being present at work. Benefits are the same, except that instead of the employee choosing what to spend the money on, the employer chooses.

You get what you pay for. If you pay people to be present at work, they will be present at work. They will, generally speaking, do enough work while there to avoid getting in trouble. That's how the normal pay structure works… they threaten you with reprimands or firing if you don't produce your quota, and reward you for being there, doing the minimum amount of work via salary and benefits.

But what do you get if you do more work, or better work? Generally speaking, you get nothing… at all. Often times you don't even get a verbal thank you from your boss, let alone something that stands out in your memory.

So we've covered why the normal structure doesn't work… now let's get to the meat of the article, what does work.

Pay By Accomplishment

This is probably the strongest motivation of all the items on this list. Unfortunately, it is also the one that is the hardest to implement… you can implement any of the others at any level of a company, from three man teams up to the entire corporation. This particular change, however, has to come from the top, because it is a HUGE change from the norm, and requires a lot of additional work for initial setup.

That being said, paying someone for what they accomplish makes how hard they work mean something. At the vast majority of companies, if I don't work in sales, I can have triple the output of the next highest worker in my same department/field/whatever, and I will make zero more than him. In fact, I will make zero more than the LOWEST performing person.

A lot of companies actually do pay by accomplishment, but only for their sales department. After all, it's very easy to see how the performance of a salesman affects the company monetarily… when they sell more, the company makes more. That's obvious enough that it's not hard to talk people into paying a commission, or in other words, by accomplishment.

Other departments, on the other hand, are generally not quite so obvious. The change in most departments comes from them becoming more efficient, accomplishing more of whatever they do in less time, with less effort, and generally with less money (especially if they become efficient enough to need less staff). That being said, other departments are more difficult because it's harder to measure their output, also.

Take a call center, for example. If you pay people based on how many calls they handle, you will get them pushing people off the phone, not really providing good service. If you pay them based on customer satisfaction on the other hand, you may get them spending TOO much time per call. So the solution, in cases like this, is to use multiple criteria… in this case, they get paid based on the number of calls combined with customer satisfaction. If people report a three out of five satisfaction, you get X amount. If it's a 4 out of 5, you get Y amount.

As a special note, the criteria for departments that perform maintenance should have to do with uptime (ie the time where there are no problems) rather than problems fixed, or you get backwards incentives (incentive to cause, or at least not prevent, problems).

One last note, but it's very important. All companies should have a standing policy that if an employee suggests something that improves profit, whether by increasing revenue or saving money, that employee should get a percentage of the increased profit. That provides HUGE motivation for actually suggesting ideas that might really contribute to your company.
Reward Extra Effort By Means Other Than Money

This is an important motivator, as well. Money is nice (very nice to some), but what motivates many people even more, once their basic financial needs are met, is public recognition of their extra effort. This can be a nice little plaque, a meeting called in which they are thanked, or even just having the boss take them out to lunch. These things don't have to be big and expensive, though people will remember that, too, they just shouldn't be totally cheap for it's type of item(don't give them a $2.99 watch if you are going to give them a watch, give them a $40.00 (or more, if you'd like) watch). Being cheap provides exactly the opposite effect of what you're after, telling them that you don't value their extra effort any higher than whatever cheap amount you spent.
Hold Contests

Most people are, by nature, at least somewhat competitive in any area where they think they are good. That means you have to design your contests to be in an area that helps performance, while still making everyone feel like they are able to participate. Retail sales is a great example of this idea… you can set up a small prize, say $50, for the person who sells the most items, or the most value, in a limited time, like a week or two. The second might even work better, because it allows people to be less high pressure salesmen, instead concentrating on getting a few people to buy big items.

Even though the amount is relatively small, people will work harder, both because they want the prize and because they want to WIN. That desire to win enables you to use much smaller prizes than you otherwise would need.
Distribute (Or Post) Top Workers Lists

This is really a combination of #2 and #3, a contest where the reward is other than money (though you can certainly offer money to whoever is number one on the list for even more motivation). Again, this draws on people's competitive nature. People love to hear that they are number one at almost anything. People are proud to be the number one coffee bean grinder… it doesn't really matter how trivial the thing is, it's still motivational to hear someone recognize you as number one. Top worker lists build on this… and can be organized by any criteria you choose. You can have the top salesman by volume, by dollars, or by customer satisfaction. Or you can have a list for each, though each list you add dilutes the value of all existing lists by a little bit.

If you have the ability to do these things, you will find your employees working harder for you, and more satisfied with their jobs, even if their actual monetary wages don't change much. The secret to motivating your subordinates is understanding that they want to be rewarded for their efforts, not for their time.

There are exceptions to that rule… there are people who prefer to be paid for their time, rather than their efforts. There is a reason they prefer it that way, though… they don't want to work hard, to put in effort beyond the minimum. The great secondary benefit to changing your reward structure is these minimum effort people will (after much complaining) tend to find their way out of the company, while the ones who work hard will stay. That makes your company (or department, or non-profit, or whatever) that much leaner and stronger.

Rewarding people based on their efforts will get you (or help you keep) better employees, help you weed out the ones who are not contributing their fair share, and make your good employees happier, all while almost certainly helping both your income and your profit.