There are many ways in which I deceive myself to achieve my goals, such as making up various rewards and punishments for yourself or outsource app progress tracking. In general, I am a deeply goal-oriented person and, for better or worse, obsessed with “winning,” which I always thought made me an ideal candidate for such complex productivity techniques as detailed to-do lists full of tasks in order of priority. While I really love good technique, I decided to make a change last year when I became concerned that maybe I was spending so much time prioritizing and planning that I didn't have enough time. does. So I just focused on work – and it worked. Here's what I mean and how my brilliant idea helped me crush last year's resolutions.
Adopting a “do it now” mindset
I've covered a lot of productivity hacks for Lifehacker, and the two that I liked the most, both in theory and in practice, are: two– And rules 10 minutes. The idea is that if a certain task takes less than two (or 10, depending on your preferred approach) minutes to complete, you should just get it out of the way at the start of the day. It's smart because it leaves little time for overthinking or over-planning, but even when I used it for 10-minute tasks, I wasn't sure it was effective enough. Some tasks take more than 10 minutes. I felt like the “just do it” mentality helped me, but it could have been used. more useful. So I started thinking more about just “getting it done now” rather than setting aside time.
Making a to-do list every morning and determining how long each task will take, which ones are most important, and which ones will require the most resources works well for some people, but for me it's too tedious. Since I got into the “do it now” mindset, I don't do it at all anymore. When I think of something, I just do it, no matter what it is or how long it takes (within reason). If for some reason I can't fit it in when I think of it, I add it to a note on my phone, which also counts as doing it now, even though “it” adds the task to the list.
How it helped me
My goals for the past year have mostly focused on my health and fitness, as well as my living space. I wanted to become a healthier and better myself, which required spending more time at the gym and having a clean, organized home to relax in. My “do it now” mindset helped me in both cases, especially when I was starting to make my resolutions around this time last year. I didn't force myself to workout at a specific time or try to fit exercise into a structured daily schedule. Instead, I just firmly told myself that I would go when it came to me, and would not hesitate or make excuses. I visited the gym during lunch breaks, Saturday mornings and late evenings on weekdays. As soon as I thought about it, I went (or studied at home, usually riding my Peloton) – and it worked. The longer I did this, the more working out became a normal and expected part of my day. Remarkably, by the fall I had developed such an attachment to an hour of physical activity every day that I did started planning it and were able to wake up every day before sunrise just knock it out. I don't think this would have happened if I hadn't tried my new motivation-based approach.
The same went for cleaning. Eat so many cleaning methods and approaches, and to be clear, each one is well suited to a certain type of person. I've tried them all and nothing is more helpful to me than just cleaning something the moment I thought about it or saw it needed to be done. If I see a dirty baseboard, I don't save it for “living room cleaning” day; I jump up from the couch and wipe it off. Developing this habit wasn't easy because it's easy to throw in the towel and decide to complete these tasks at the designated time to clean the house, but once I got the hang of it, I noticed something: I no longer necessary Set aside a Saturday for cleaning. There was no need for a massive cleanup because everything was solved whenever a problem arose.
What are your thoughts so far?
This time, my goals for the new year are to keep up the momentum by working out and cleaning up, as well as improve my financial situation and achieve some professional achievements that I put off during the year spent on self-improvement. Once I'm done with this, I'll call one of the companies overseeing one of my 401k accounts to check on my rollover status, which is something I would have put off before entering the “do it now” era.
Different things suit different people, but you can think too much and do too little. My technique doesn't do this taken from the book and, I admit, sometimes it has to be abandoned when there are serious, large-scale projects that need to be broken down and processed systematically, but the beauty of it is that it leaves me with the time and mental energy to get it done when needed.
