10 tips to help you finally get things done

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

For those who cannot get off the ground.

1. Create a presentation of yourself

Eva Katz in the book "30 Rules of a Real Dreamer" advises to treat yourself as a project. We are so arranged that we are more often ready to take other people's tasks more responsibly than to our own. So, before the guests arrive, some apartments undergo a hellish general cleaning, which people have not done for themselves for years.

Let's act differently: we will become our own producers, we will treat ourselves as a business project. Do you want to be an actor or dream of a new job, a bigger apartment, the loss of eight kilograms - no matter what goal you cannot start moving towards.

As soon as you create a project out of yourself, you magically change the attitude towards your own tasks. The project is no longer you, but the real work. A matter that must be treated responsibly.

How to do it? Create a presentation about your imaginary self on the topic "The most successful person on the planet / person in the nomination …". It's like you're casting for a show and have to talk about yourself as an accomplished hero. In the presentation you need to add photographs (bodies, houses, cars, families), descriptions of successes (for example, you have written several books, received an Oscar, and the like). The format can be fabulous. The main thing is to make a successful project out of yourself and describe it in great detail.

This exercise will help you see yourself clearly in 10 years, try on this image and use it in the future. The essence of the presentation is precisely in working out the details. In the dry facts of the life of a successful person. This is the main idea of a personal project with which you will continue to work. You just won't have any other choice.

2. Start playing

Imagine that your life is a martial art or game, the goal of which is to overcome an obstacle and achieve results. Once you accept the rules of the game, you will get used to the discomfort that accompanies the constant feeling of dissatisfaction.

You will never be able to do everything perfectly: mistakes are inevitable, it is important to realize and accept this. Although it is they who often slow us down. The good news is that every mistake you make can teach you something. The learning process has no boundaries. You’ll soon realize the nonsense of “this isn’t easy” (a familiar excuse, right?), Or “this is not fair,” or “I can’t handle this,” and you will see that persistence and determination pay off.

3. Prioritize (finally!)

You can get almost everything you want, but you cannot get absolutely everything. Life is like a huge buffet full of delicious dishes you never dreamed of trying.

Choosing a goal sometimes means giving up what you want in order to get what you want even more.

And this is where some fall into a stupor: they do not dare to give up an opportunity for fear of missing something else, they pursue too many goals at the same time and in the end they do not achieve anything or almost nothing.

Don't get discouraged. And do not be confused by the abundance of options. You are able to get much more of what you need to be happy. Make a choice, prioritize and boldly move forward.

4. Don't fly alone

In the best moments of life, we are usually surrounded by people. We go through the events for which it is worth living together with friends and family.

“Together we should be better than apart” - this is the fundamental message of any relationship.

When your wife is around, you should be happier than without her. You should have more joy working or making progress with a colleague than working alone. It seems self-evident, but it is not so easy to bring it to life. Perhaps support is what you need to get started. Find such a person in your environment - your own "magic kicker".

5. "Write" the script of the film

Imagine your action plan as a movie script, where you visualize who is doing what over time. First, define the key messages (for example, “hire the best talent”) and then refine them.

Start from the big picture and highlight specific tasks and their time frames (for example, “over the next two weeks, select the specialists who will find these most talented employees”). When you do this, there will inevitably be cost, time and personnel issues, so keep adjusting the plan until all the details of the machine are working smoothly.

6. Have some tea

Seriously. In one famous Buddhist dialogue, a Zen master often answers his student's difficult philosophical questions like this: "Go have some tea." To fully comprehend the spiritual culture of Asia, you need to understand the value that tea traditionally has here. The essence of the tea ceremony is to boil water, make tea and drink it. Nothing more.

These words contain the whole secret of tea culture, the quintessence of its essence. And in its everyday, not so strict form, the tea ceremony is suitable to pause our hectic everyday life and think about where we are going (and whether we want to go at all). “Drink tea, forget about the noise of the world,” they say in China.

7. Come up with 20 awards

To get started, you need a magic goblet (or whatever you want there). Come up with a reward for yourself when you take the first step. And the next one - when the second. Only they should be different.

If you reward yourself in the same way, the pleasure channels become clogged and the effect of the reward diminishes.

Someone enjoys a sweet eclair. Throwing eclairs into yourself every day is ineffective. And if you eat an eclair every 20 days, it will be a real pleasure. Each person should have their own list of rewards. And they need to be alternated. Make a list of the things you really love and have at least 20 items on the list.

8. Formulate tasks correctly

The correct formulation of tasks is designed to reduce the intensity of mental gum, to stop the endless thinking of the problem in a circle. In general, words have a very strong effect on a person (this is what neurolinguistic programming and psychotherapy are based on).

Therefore, how and when this task will be completed depends on what words you choose when formulating a task. Often, after replacing one verb, it was almost immediately performed, although before that it could have been on the to-do list for several weeks and postponed until later. Try it. Suddenly this is your option.

9. Don't try to overcome all fears

The main mistake: "First I will deal with my fears, then I will start to act." If you get the impression that only desperate brave men, adventure seekers and lovers of shaking the good old values act at once, then this is not true. Or rather, not everything. The truth is only about values, because it is just useful to test them for strength. In fact, everyone is afraid. It is not worth waiting for the moment when it will not be scary.

Surprisingly, change often begins with fear. With great fear that life will pass, and we will not even give ourselves a chance to fight for a dream.

10. Accept that you do not know the future 100%

Recognize that you may not know the best course of action, and your ability to cope with what you don’t know is more important than what you know. Most people make ineffective decisions because they are so convinced that they are right that they simply do not allow themselves to see alternatives.

Those who adhere to the principle of absolute open-mindedness know that asking the right questions to other smart people to get their opinion is more important than having answers to everything. They realize that it is impossible to make a good decision without being in a state of not knowing for a while. Because this area of uncertainty and ignorance itself is much larger and more interesting than anything that any of us knows.

Choose a method to your liking, and go ahead - to act. Right now.