I’ve been wanting to write this for a while now because I began taking note of something interesting about myself this summer. It seems that I and many others have a bit of trouble focusing and being productive during the hot summer months or what is known as the summer doldrums. This is not merely a summer phenomenon. Many times during the year I am my own worst enemy when it comes to accomplishing what I’ve set out to do because I get sidetracked easily and I enjoy being engrossed in busy-ness of working in my business that I often forget to work on my business. I am speaking of my particular case and business goals but you can apply this to any goals or aspirations in your life.


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If you are like me, then your life is plagued by periods where you are working, working, working but not very effective. Before you go to bed at night, in your mind you go through what you accomplished in your day and you realize that it hasn’t been that much. And then, accompanied by a slightly ill feeling in your gut, you ask yourself that dreaded question, “what did I do today?” You see, all day you were busy, busy, busy and we may think we’re actually accomplishing something that will move us forward toward our goals but in actuality, we are doing tasks to keep us busy and avoid taking those actions necessary for moving forward and achieving our goals. So, what happened?

You know the answer, of course, is that your day was primarily composed of checking email with this perverse sort of need to know who emailed you and why, checking your Facebook to see posted on your wall, walking through your friends list and looking at your Facebook friend’s pictures. Sure, you took care of some important , but routine tasks such as scheduling a dentist appointment, paying bills, and making a few important phone calls, all of which could have been lumped together and completed in about an hour or less.

The rest of the your day consisted of spinning your wheels with emails, chatting on Facebook with an old friend, telling your Twitter world some crucial piece of information about where you’re going this weekend, and watching a funny video that your best friend sent. If you’re like me, you have some pretty big goals and you probably set out that morning to accomplish tasks that would move you toward those goals.

I have found 7 steps that work marvelously for turning this around completely and getting into massive, goal-achieving action.

1. Stop
The first step is to stop what you’re doing, take a deep breath, go on a walk, go fishing, and clear your head. The important thing to remember is that if you are spinning your wheels in the mud, the first thing you must do to get out is stop spinning. Get out of your office and away from your computer long enough start to see the bigger picture once again. Now that your head is clear and you can see the forest for the trees, you are ready for step 2.

2. Pray
Take a minute and say a prayer. Ask for clarity of mind and help in defining the problem you want to solve (goal you would like to achieve). Ask for the ability to stay focused and execute your plan once you have it.

3. Ask
There are 2 questions to ask in this step: What hurdle am I trying to overcome and who can help me overcome it? Go over in your mind what information you need to start creating and who can help you with ideas and against whom you can run these ideas by to to get feedback. Think of it as a problem that needs to be solved. If you were to present your problem to a business partner, family member, mentor or friend (OK, so I gave away step 3) what background information would they need to clearly understand the problem and help you solve it. Who can you enlist to be on your team to accomplish what you want to accomplish?

4. Enlist
Here’s where you need to use your team. Talk to people that love you and have an interest in seeing you succeed. Present your problem that you clearly defined in step 2. Give them the information they need and only that. Don’t give them extemporaneous detail that will cloud their minds and yours. Bounce ideas off of them and get feedback. Begin to formulate some actions and strategies that can be quickly and easily implemented and tested.

5. Plan
Now, create a plan with action items. Break your goal down into a series of consecutive action items or mini goals. The best way to plan is to back in to what you want to achieve. What I mean here is to start with your end goal in mind and ask yourself, “what had to have happened immediately preceding my goal for me to achieve it?” And then, “what had to have happened immediately preceding that for the last thing to have happened?” Repeat until you get all the way back to where you are today. You should have a list of action items and next to each one is a date that you are committing to complete them.

6. Imagine
Live in your goal. Imagine it is now a reality. What does it feel like now that you’ve completed it. Feel what it feels like. Hear the sounds. Smell the smells. Is this what you really want? Is it aligned with your values? Is it something that you’re committed to. If it doesn’t excite you tremendously or is not aligned with your values, you may want to go back to step 1 and begin again.

7. Act
Take action and stick to your plan. Execute your action items and complete them by the date you set. Don’t worry if you fall behind schedule, you can always change your schedule… just don’t change your goal. Revise your plan every once in awhile.

The most important part of this process is having a goal and sticking with it. I will repeat what I said above, “you can always change the schedule of action items in your plan but your should not change the goal.” Move forward with it even if you meet with opposition from well-meaning friends or family that may tell you why you probably won’t achieve it.

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We live in an increasingly complex world. Every day, it seems we are asked to remember more things – passcodes for various accounts, anniversaries and birthdays, tasks to complete, and more. While organizational tools such as day planners and PDAs can help keep track of it all, it is still important to remember much of this information. If you struggle with data recollection, you may feel like you can’t do anything to improve your situation. You may think that you were born with a bad memory, and that you are stuck with it. Fortunately, that is not the case. Memory is just like any other thinking skill – there are things that you can do to improve you ability to remember things. Below are five simple tips that you can use to improve your memory.

1. Give your brain some exercise. Imagine if you did a fitness regimen that consisted of nothing but pushups all day long. You would soon have well-developed arms, chest and shoulders, but the rest of your body would look the same as it did when you started. Your brain works the same way. If you perform the same tasks over and over every day, it gets into a rut and its overall ability to function is diminished. You can exercise all of the parts of your brain by giving it new tasks – something as simple as trying to perform a task with your eyes closed can help.
2. Write things down. Many people think that if they have a good memory, they don’t need to bother writing things down. In fact, the opposite is true – writing things down helps improve your memory. This is because your brain is thinking about the item for an extra amount of time as you as writing, and that extra amount of time is often enough to lock that item inside your brain.
3. Understand an item completely. If someone asks you to perform a task, and their description of the task isn’t clear, it will be harder for your brain to visualize the task, and as a result you may forget it. Ask questions about the item you are being asked to remember if you do not totally understand it. Get a firm understanding of the item. If it is a physical thing, try to picture the thing. If it is a task, visualize yourself performing the task. If there are “holes” in your visualization, get more information until the visualization is clear.
4. Use small lists. Phone numbers are easier to understand because they are broken into groups. 800-555-1212 is easier for the brain to remember than 8005551212.
5. Live healthy. Studies have shown that people who get proper amounts of sleep remember things better than the sleep deprived, and that non-smokers have better memories than smokers.

By using these tips, you can help improve your ability to remember the important pieces of information in your life.

Louise Baker is always forgetting where she left her keys. For her her day job, she writes about getting an Online degree. Her most recent article was on 45 Of The Weirdest College Scholarships.

Do you ever wonder what makes a person creative? Have you ever thought about what it takes to make great ideas a reality? For the past few years I’ve been fascinated with what makes the most effective companies and people of our day successful.

I recently finished the terrific book, Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky the founder and CEO of Behance.

Despite having read nearly 50 personal development books over the past two years, I found Making Ideas Happen (not an affiliate link), to be refreshing and full of powerful insights. The book especially spoke to the perfectionist side of me, and encouraged me to finally begin a few projects I have been putting off for far too long.

The book takes an in depth look at some of the most creative companies around today, including giants like Zappos and Apple, as well the secrets of what makes the team of Behance so successful.

The book is split into 3 parts which I feel helped effectively communicate the overall message.

Making Ideas = (The idea) + Organization and Execution + Forces of Community + Leadership Capability

Organization: Without a doubt one of the most common traits of “creative” individuals, is the relentless desire for organization. Are you organized? Can you keep the bigger picture insight?

Community: Community also plays a significant role in making ideas reality. Rarely can great ideas happen without the help of others. Is your community helping or holding you back?

Leadership: When all is said and done, turing an idea into an actionable goal all comes down to accepting responsibility for what you create. Can you take the leadership needed to succeed? Can you take responsibility for your successes as well as failures?

Take Aways:

Be Personal: For you and your idea to really get rolling your idea has to be personal. You have to be passionate about seeing it through. If the passion isn’t there, it is very unlikely that your idea will see the light of day. What you’re passionate about won’t always turn out to be a success, but following your interests will surely increase your chances of succeeding. Run with an idea that makes you tick, not one that just looks good on paper.

Break Projects Down: You have a an amazing idea. So what? The next step is to break your idea down into actionable steps that you can instantly see progress with. The book recommends when writing actions steps to begin with a verb, that way, you are forced to take some sort of action. When you are specific in what needs to be done it makes each step that much easier. Focus on the small steps and it’s only a matter of time before the bigger picture comes into play.

Act Without Conviction: The truth is, the longer you wait to move on your idea the less likely it is to see the real world. That isn’t to say you should never plan, but more often than not people tend to over plan and become paralyzed by the fear of failure. Creative individuals don’t run from failure, they make it their friend.

Share Ideas Liberally: If you think you have a good idea it never hurts to share it. Your chances of success significantly increase when you have a team in place. That isn’t to say you can’t succeed alone but having people behind your idea will help you stay focused and keep your eye on what really matters: making your idea happen.

Feedback Is Essential: This was a big one for me, as I’m not the best when accepting feedback. Hearing what other people think about your idea can help you if you let it. Don’t let people’s opinions sway your overall goal, but at the same time don’t be naive enough to think feedback is worthless. Take what you need and ignore the rest.

You Are Creative

I honestly believe that we all have a creative side, it’s simply a matter of cultivating it.

How many times have you had an idea you never acted on, only to see weeks later that someone else did? Could that person have been you?

Far too often we focus too much on the idea rather than the execution. Obviously, planning and research does play an important role but you have to take off sometime.

When I started my personal blog a few years ago, I had no idea what I was going to write about, but I did know that I wanted to help people live better lives. I started a domain with literally no idea of what to write , but over time my idea refined itself. I’m glad started blogging because it has been one of the greatest things I have ever done. When you take the leap you’re nearly always rewarded.

The truth is, we have great ideas come to us everyday, yet without action our idea is quickly smothered.  You don’t have to start big, tiny steps are better than no steps at all.

Creativity 101

Once I realized what I wanted to write about on my personal blog, I routinely rejected my ideas because I was afraid it wouldn’t be well received. Even to this day, I sometimes struggle with fear and perfection. But the truth is, it’s far better to get something out than to never “ship” at all.

The more you create the better you become at making your ideas a reality. Execution, not ideas, is what makes you creative.The most successful entrepreneurs aren’t the one’s with the best ideas, but instead, are the one’s who are willing to put in the work.

I can nearly guarantee that if you’re struggling with your creativity  right now, it’s not because you have a lack of ideas, it’s because you’re  letting  fear of failure hold you back. Being creative is scary, but it is also one of the most rewarding things in the world. Knowing that you DO make a difference  is sometimes scary to admit but it doesn’t make it any less true.

While I barely scratched the ideas covered in the book, I hope I gave you a better insight on what makes people creative.

What projects are you waiting to start? What amazing ideas are you selfishly holding back?

Start writing that novel. Begin that knitting business. Create art. Let your ideas flow.

Time to execute. There is no other way.

But there was one problem: Despite his impressive accomplishments, the tone of his email was somber and sad, because like many, he wrestled with the endless cycle with self improvement. Even though he reached all his goals he was empty on the inside.

It wasn’t long before I began to see myself behind the sadness of his email. I quickly realized his situation wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. I couldn’t help but empathize with him because I had been there before.

Far too often we subscribe to the ridiculous notion that if we aren’t improving all the time that we aren’t worthy, which I have come to discover is absolute bullshit. Our happiness doesn’t come from simply reaching our goals but rather celebrating them.

Today’s post is about helping you break away from that endless cycle of improvement and instead learn to celebrate your successes both big and small.

Celebrate The Small Steps

Change happens one step at a time, you won’t reach your goals within a matter of days. That’s why it’s important to celebrate each step of the way. It has been said that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. Yet so many people continue to forget how important small steps really are. You may think that meditating for 15 minutes each day won’t help you in the long run. You may think that going for that walk every evening won’t help keep you fit. Yet the reality is, small movement never fails to produce results in the end.

When you start small and see that you are capable of succeeding ( you ARE capable) you then have a foundation to work with. With each goal you reach take a moment and reflect on what you’ve done. I literally get chills when I think back to where I was two years ago. It’s because I took small steps (and celebrated the milestones in the process) that I am here today.

How do you celebrate? That’s entirely up to you. For you, it may be taking a day off of work and spending the day with your kids. Or maybe after reaching that fitness goal of yours you finally take family vacation to the beach. Be creative. Do anything that makes you feel good, assuming it’s legal of course. ;)

Just because you’re taking small steps doesn’t mean that those steps aren’t worthy. Appreciate and celebrate every step you take no matter how small it may be.

Celebrate Don’t Stagnate

There’s a myth that many self improvement readers seem to have fallen for lately, and that is you have to be at your best 100 percent of the time. This myth causes a great deal of pain for those who believe it, because it’s literally an impossible level to sustain. The truth is you can’t be at the top of your game all the time. In an ideal world perhaps, but realistically speaking it’s out of the question.

I’m all about hard work, but even the hardest of workers know when it’s time to take time off to just have fun. Yet it’s important not to confuse celebrate with stagnate. When you celebrate you’re rejuvenating yourself. When you  stagnate you’re simply asking to be left behind. Nonetheless, the self improvement path shouldn’t own your life.

It’s OK to take a break and just be human. It’s OK to celebrate your accomplishments. It’s OK to mess up and not beat yourself up over it. Periodically, I take a day or two to just let loose. I’ll go drinking with friends or stay up late doing nothing productive. During that time I throw all the self improvement ideas out the door and just be the 18 year old that I am. You can do the same.

Hard work without celebration is a burn out waiting to happen. There has to be balance. If you’re taking action just so you can use your cool red pen to cross off an item on your to do-list you’re producing nothing of value. You should be proud enough of your goals that you have no problem celebrating when you reach them. Again, don’t confuse celebrating with being cocky or arrogant because there is a difference.

Drop the “self improvement” mindset and just bask in your current level of personal growth. You can’t grow without rest, everyone needs a break. When you celebrate your successes you feel good about yourself, and as a result it’s likely you will continue to make a difference.

Celebrate Both Failure and Success

While I believe it’s important to celebrate your success I also believe it’s important to celebrate your failures. Next time you fail try this: Celebrate your failure. Be grateful for the opportunity to learn. Be thankful for the reminder that you’re not perfect. Value your relationship with failure for it will one day introduce you to success.

Nobody enjoys to fail, but those who embrace it tend to be more successful. What is failure anyway? Another way to say lesson learned? Over the past few years failed miserably, but I’ve also had my share of successes. On the success side, I’ve co-authored an e-book, shared my message with thousands of people, and have become a generally happier person.

However the path hasn’t always been smooth. Over the past few years I’ve also lost a best friend, battled with depression, and struggled with the ins and outs of blogging. I’ve bought products that ended up being worthless, I’ve wasted time networking with the wrong people, and said a bunch of stupid shit. Yet, when I look back at my failures I know that they were invaluable in bringing me to where I am today.

The truth is, right now you’re exactly where you need to be.

Next Stop Happiness

The paradox of the self improvement obsession is that it often makes us feel worthless instead of raise us up. The purpose of self improvement isn’t for you to become addicted to the constant need to improve. Self improvement must be a choice not a reflex.

Stop looking at happiness as a final destination. Happiness doesn’t lie in a destination but rather lies in the transportation of your life journey. Do you walk down your life path with open eyes and heart? Do you celebrate your success? Or do you remain a servant to the never ending path of improvement? Do your goals inspire you? Or are they just a means to an end?

Happiness isn’t a stop. Improvement isn’t a goal. Your inspiration comes from the fact that you are alive. Disregard those silly patterns that say you’re unworthy. Congratulate yourself on all you’ve done. You are enough.

Although I’m still on the challenge, I feel that I’m far enough along to have learned some lessons about myself and I’ve been through enough to see if this type of challenge is going to help me in the future. To cut a long story short, I don’t recommend this challenge to anyone (even if you’re trying to be productive).

Cutting out some of the individual things, like TV, has been fantastic. I’m not longer faced with tons of marketing messages each day and political interruptions to try to get me to sway to certain ideas. Instead, I’m only faced with the news and marketing I want to find, online.

I will do a post on how cutting out each one has affected me individually in the future, but today I want to sort of take a birds eye view of the whole project and share my thoughts.

1. Focus On What You Want, Rather Than What You Don’t

The more I told myself that I couldn’t watch television, the more I wanted to watch it. If people tell us not to do things (even if we tell ourselves) we automatically tend to be rebellious about it and want to do it. For example, if I tell you not to click this link (don’t click it — but it will make you smile) there’s a good chance you at least hovered over it to see the URL in your status bar.

Instead of thinking about the things I couldn’t do or couldn’t have, I found this project a lot easier by focusing on what I wanted to achieve. By thinking about what I could get done in one day and how much I could achieve in a week, I naturally focused on projects that mattered to me and just got started. I would get so immersed in things that I wouldn’t even have time to watch TV, never mind think about missing it.

2. Focus on Each Day, Not Entire Timeframes / Tasks

I have written a whole blog post on this idea, but I still think it’s important enough to be included here. The premise around this is simple: instead of thinking about what I have to do for the 6 weeks, just focus on what I have to do for today. It can be difficult to think that I have to go over a month without Facebook or chatting to friends on IM, but it’s easy to do it just for today.

And, of course, it’s always today. It’s always now. If I just focus on cutting things out right now (which is easy) then I can cut things out for 6 weeks with no problems. Any goal becomes 100% easier when you focus on what you have to do today, rather than for the life of the project.

3. Don’t Cut Out All of the ‘Fun’

I noticed that for my challenge, I cut out things that I enjoyed. This wasn’t intentional, but if something is distracting from your ‘working’ life then there’s a good chance it’s because you enjoy it. Drinking alcohol, watching television, gaming and socialising are all things I enjoy doing. Essentially I made my days boring just to get things done.

Of course, I love what I do and get to work on projects that interest me each day. However, there’s only so many hours I can dedicate to writing a blog post or answering emails before I feel both physically and mentally drained.  I like Albert’s idea of working hard for 48 minutes, spend time doing something you love for 12, then continuing that pattern throughout the day.

That is probably something I’ll implement once the challenge is over.

4. Things Get Far Easier in Time

The first week of this challenge was difficult. Very difficult. I found myself with far too much time that I simply did not know what to do with. My hobbies include building successful websites so I was already implementing into each day what I love to do. I did find myself reading books a lot more though and it’s nice to have that source of information and knowledge back into my life.

The last two weeks of this challenge have been far easier than the first two. I’m just used to not turning on the TV and not going over to Facebook to see what people are up to. Funnily, when I had to check the site for an event in London, I noticed I had 64 pending friend requests. Hopefully people aren’t too annoyed I haven’t accepted them ;).

If you do implement big changes in your life then they might seem tough at first but if you can get through that initial resistance, it should be easy sailing after that.

5. You Still Have to Work

No matter how many productivity systems you try to put in place, you still have to work. I’m pretty sure that most people use productivity systems as a way to procrastinate. Constantly looking to streamline their process so that they don’t actually have to get things done.

You can shuffle as many things in your routine as you like, but the computer screen (or whatever you work with) will still be waiting for you to do what you need to do. Make sure that you’re not looking for shortcuts and more time management tips simply because you don’t want to take action.

On that note, the timetable idea I have implemented has been absolutely fantastic. It says I still have 26 minutes to finish this article which should be enough for me to tidy things up and read through it a few times. The ‘system’ is very simple, but it certainly works for me.

Now then, what about you guys? I know many of you tried a similar challenge, so how did things work out for you?

The first is that I’m using an awesome Mac application called Self Control (more on that later) and the second is that I’m not longer being pestered by Diggy on Skype (it’s actually the other way around). The third reason, and the most important, is that I actually set myself a timetable for today.

I had the idea to try a timetable around two days ago when I saw someone else write about the process. I wish I could remember the blog so I can link to them, but sadly I can’t. My timetable is quite similar to what we all had when we were in school, hence the “back to basics” in the title. I wasn’t sure how things would work out, but it has been incredibly useful.

Today’s Timetable

Just to give you an idea of how I set out my timetable, here is what I have written down today:

10am – 11am: Write guest post for Daily Blog Tips

11am – 11.30am: Respond to all comments on PluginID (I did half) and ViperChill (I did all of them)

11.30am – Noon: Draft outline for Reality Switch eBook (a new eBook I’m working on)

12am – 12:30pm: Start on Guest Post for Search Engine People (I actually wrote 90% of it) and reply to all emails (done)

12:30pm – 1pm: Make lunch

1pm – 1:30pm: Skype call with Bud Hennekes

1:30pm – 2:30pm: Write timetables blog post for PluginID

I wrote this as soon as I woke up and vowed to stick to it. So far, it has been a total success.

If You Have All Day to Do Something, That’s How Long It Will Take

If I do not finish a task within the time I give for it, I’ll stop working on it and move on to the next item. I haven’t had to do this yet, but that is the plan anyway. I have had many days in the past where my only job for the day was to write an article about ‘X’ and that’s exactly how long it would take; all day.

The two guest posts I managed to write were both high quality and exceeded 1,000 words. I even had 20 minutes to spare after the first one so caught up with Google Reader and checked out Twitter. By giving myself just an hour to work on something, I naturally cut out all distractions and just get started.

I say naturally, but I also used a tool called Self Control (Mac). What this tool does is block you from certain websites for an amount of time allocated. If I block Twitter.com or Skype.com it will also block the Skype application and Tweetdeck. There is actually no way to turn it off and even if you restart your laptop it will still be running. So, whenever I have to write an article for an hour, I simply turn it on for 60 minutes and block all websites that would usually waste my time.

If anybody knows of a Windows alternative, please feel free to share it in the comments.

Practical Application

I’m fortunate enough (actually, I worked really hard for 2 years) to not have a day job so I know my structure won’t be suitable for everyone. However, I see no reason you can’t use this within your typical working day or after hours.

This is only my first day of using timetables, so I’m not sure how well things will continue to work out, but for some reason it feels really, really, fun. I know that might sound strange, but maybe you have to try it for yourself to understand. There are a few ideas I’ve had about continuing to use this in the future:

• New Timetable: I will create a new timetable every single day. I don’t like setting an hour to wake up on, so I will work with whatever hours I have
• I Will Not Extend Times: If I give myself an hour, that’s all I’ll give to the task unless I really need to extend it. If I still need to finish something, I’ll schedule it in at a later hour of the day
• I Won’t Plan a Whole Day: As many of you know, I’m travelling around Europe soon so will only be working for a few hours each day. Instead, I will plan a block of 3-4 hours to get things done which leaves me flexible to whatever life wants to throw at me

I would love to know what you think of this idea! Have you tried something like it before? Are you going to try it? Is it too ‘robotic’ for you?

Therefore, I wanted to make it clear that people shouldn’t feel bad for asking me questions, and the post was a chance for people to do so. One thing that surprised me was the number of comments and emails I received about how to enjoy things that you don’t. How to get through a chore you hate but have no choice but to carry on doing.

More specifically, people wanted to know how they could get passionate about the jobs they hated turning up to every Monday morning. Since leaving my job 8 months ago and only working on projects I love, my immediate response was to advise these people to get another job / task.

Of course, having worked in the rat race for 4 years, I should know that isn’t the easiest thing to do. So, I thought about it some more, and came across three strategies to help you bring passion into jobs that you dread or simply bore you to death.

After all, if you can’t get out of a situation, you can at least make the most of it.

Just Work for Two Minutes

The hardest part about doing any job or chore, is usually the mental battle before even starting on it. Knowing you’re about to fill up the sink and wash dishes, getting ready for work in the morning before the gruelling 9-5 or just procrastinating over the task which came to mind when you read the title of this post.

Something that helps me greatly, and research has proven to be effective, is to simply work on something for two minutes. That’s it. The next 8 hours might be hard, but surely you can do something for two minutes? You see, it’s nothing more than our thoughts that make a task hard or boring, and if you can just get started on something, it becomes so much easier.

Just start on that proposal. Just start on that design. Just start on writing that document. Even if you start it and actually stop two minutes later, you’ll likely suffer from a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite complete yet, and be motivated to finish it off.

Time Yourself

It’s probably a surprise to most people that whilst the majority of my work day is spent writing in some form, I used to absolutely hate it. I couldn’t stand English lessons and loathed having written coursework to take home. These days, I get passionate about my writing, but it didn’t used to be that way, and that’s where my ‘time yourself’ idea comes from.

Whatever it is you’re dreading or bores you to death, see how quickly you can complete it. Literally look at your watch or computer clock and note down the time. Then, get on with the task as quickly as possible, and see how you do. I’ve found this small injection of fun actually makes me much more productive and I enjoy seeing if I can beat the challenge on subsequent days.

Of course, don’t substitute quality for quantity, but you’ll find this method won’t necessarily lower your performance, just lower your focus on distractions.

Focus on the Outcome

I rarely recommend disregarding the process and focusing on end results, but if it helps you get through the day, then by all means use it. One person who commented said that they had three months left of a job that they hated with a passion, and wanted help getting through the hard times.

They made it very clear that there was no way out and they would have to continue to work. My advice, in this case, was for this particular person to focus on the reason they were there in the first place, and use that as their motivation to get through the day.

Are you doing it for the money? Focus on what you’ll spend it on.

Are you doing it for qualifications? Think about how they will help shape your future.

It’s so easy to get caught up in what we have to do that we forget why we do it in the first place. It’s also so easy to get caught up in the misery of actual tasks we don’t know how to get that task done and enjoy it at the same time.

By incorporating ideas like timing yourself, working for just a few minutes and focusing on why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’ll start to incorporate passion into the boring jobs of your work. If you have your own tips for injecting passion into jobs that fill you with misery, I would love to hear them in the comments!

P.S. I launched a new website this week called ViperChill. It is about Viral Marketing and the main focus is helping you build successful websites online that help you make money and quit your day job. The reason the slogan is about Viral Marketing is because the site aims to help you create remarkable websites that people naturally want to talk about. Make sure you sign up to the RSS feed to get future updates for free.

I actually can’t believe it has been over a week already. It seems only yesterday that I wrote the original blog post. If the following five weeks go this fast, this challenge could turn out to be a lot easier than I expected.

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Quick Run Down

Every Friday I will give a little summary of the things I am cutting out of my life and how they are going.

Alcohol – I can happily say that I have not touched a drop in the last eight days. I’m certainly not reliant on alcohol to have a good time, but I do like to have a drink when I go out with my friends. They did bust my balls a bit for being the sober one this weekend, but it didn’t make me slip up.

I was used to not drinking for long periods of time in South Africa while partying so it is not like I’m wading in unknown territory. I did have a slight desire for it but it was easy to overcome.

IM – IM refers to Instant Messaging and the two programs I use for this are Skype and MSN Messenger. I use these to talk to friends who are in other parts of the world but still decided to cut them out as they waste a lot of my time.

I have not even thought about signing on to MSN Messenger which surprises me. I admit that I did sign on to Skype two days ago but purely for business reasons to discuss something that I’m working on. This lasted less than 30 minutes and then I closed it again. Again, somehow, this aspect of the challenge has been a lot easier than I expected.

Television – By far this has been the hardest thing for me to cut out and I have not been completely successful in all honesty. If I walk around the house somebody has a television on somewhere and I always catch a glimpse. Again, family meals are always around the box as well which makes things more difficult.

I will be living on my own for the next 3 weeks though so will remove television completely from my life. No excuses. I honestly haven’t found a good way to replace the time yet though; there are only so many books I can read each day.

Idle Web Surfing / Online Games – In the original post I mentioned how I was slightly addicted to a particular online game. Well, again, I haven’t missed it in the slightest. Thinking about it now, I suppose it would be cool to play, but I don’t have to play.

As far as idle web surfing goes, I have caught myself out a few times. This is worse when I have Tweetdeck open as people are always posting different links that you “must” click on. Cutting out the idle surfing has massively increased productivity but has been far harder than cutting out the game.

Changes

There are a few changes that I’ve implemented this week. I predict that as I get further into the challenge, this list will get smaller as I should be in some sort of routine.

Sleep Schedule – Typically, my wake up time would be around 11am or even noon and then I wouldn’t go to sleep until 3 or 4 am. Because of my challenge, I want to have more time in the mornings to get things done and then hopefully be tired earlier in the evening.

Right now I’m waking up between 9am and 10am and then going to sleep at around midnight. I find that this is a much more natural schedule and my body is already waking up at this time without an alarm.

Dutch – I’m sorry to say (for all the people that feel let down) that I have decided to terminate my goal of learning Dutch in three months. I have spoke to Diggy and we may be cutting short our time in Amsterdam, so I don’t really see the point anymore. The original aim was actually to have something constant in my life as I was wasting a lot of time in other areas, but honestly, work has taken over and it is much more enjoyable.

I did feel a bit anxious about how people here would respond, but then I asked myself “Would you rather quit because you want to, or continue something you don’t want just to keep other people happy?” Ultimately, I decided to go for what I want to do. In the two weeks I was learning Dutch I managed to pick up:

• All of the colours
• Most of the numbers
• A large array of animals
• I could say things like “The man with brown hair is young and he drives an old yellow car”

The Rosetta Stone program is still excellent in my opinion and I was surprised at how much I have learned, but that challenge stops here.

Reading - I have read two books already this week due to the extra spare time I have found myself with. I don’t think I had read one in the whole month prior to this challenge so that is quite a change. There is only so much I can read each day before I start getting headaches or just plain tired of it, however.

Sedona – I have added the Sedona Method into my schedule again. There was a time when I did this daily for months, but it has not been in my daily plans for quite a while. The Sedona Method is a releasing program which is great for dealing with issues in your mind. Instead of trying to solve things or go over them constantly, it offers a way to let go of them and be free from the emotional and physical side effects.

Green Tea – As I have been reading a lot more (which includes eBooks on my laptop) I have found myself getting slightly addicted to green tea. It’s nice to have by my side when engrossed in something. It makes me feel very relaxed and healthy which I love, but I don’t want to implement caffeine into my diet. I’m going to see if a non-caffeine alternative still has the benefits and if so, I’ll continue drinking it.

Otherwise, I’m going to finish my box of 100 bags (about 60 left) and then leave it.

A Small Request

I would say that the week has been a total success in terms of both productivity and focusing on things that matter to me. As it’s getting closer to moving to Amsterdam and I start video blogging, I have a small request to anyone that has a microphone on their computer:

Could you please record yourself saying “PluginID” (Pronounced: Plugin EYE DEE) and send it to plugin@pluginid.com. I’m looking for sound only, no videos. This is for my video intro that I’m putting together. If you would like to have your voice heard by over 100,000 people, you know what to do.

First of all, I’m pushing myself to learn a new language in as little as three months. Secondly, I follow a strict training regime in my quest to get big and muscly. These are two goals which aren’t achievable overnight, and will take both hard work and dedication to get the results I want.

Since striving for these big goals in my life, I’ve noticed why I’m able to succeed. Why I’m able to refrain from cheat meals or the urge to skip a protein shake. Why I stay up until midnight just to make sure I get my hour of Dutch practice in for the day. Why I can take myself the extra mile.

Most people might put it down to dedication or even some form of motivation. In actuality, it’s neither of those. Instead, it’s all about my timeframe. Before I get into that, I want to talk about beliefs quickly.

The Importance of Belief

Let’s say that I fly out to wherever you are in the world right now and we go to the nearest running track. I tell you that I want you to power walk 2 laps in 4 minutes, and if you can do that I’ll give you $10,000. I also add that the world record for power walking those two laps is 4 minutes and 3 seconds.

I’m challenging you to break it and show me you are the fastest power walker in the world. How confident would you be about being able to do it? Would you even try?

Now let’s say I go a little easier on you, and say you have 6 minutes to power walk the two laps. That’s a nice 2 minutes slower than the world record. How confident would you be this time you could win the $10,000? You would at least give it a go, wouldn’t you?

Shortening Your Time Frame

Now, with most goals, we tend to think ahead. I know that if I want to take my scrawny body to something you would see in a men’s swimwear catalogue, it’s going to take some time. It won’t happen overnight. Sadly, the only 6 pack I’m likely to wake up with the next day is the one that’s given me a hangover.

Now, my regime for ‘getting ripped’ is quite serious. I take two protein shakes everyday, a number of multivitamins, and I work out specific parts of my body 3-4 times per week. Knowing I’m going to have to do this for at least 4-5 months to see any decent gains can be disheartening.

Similarly, learning Dutch is not going to be a walk in the park. Progress will inevitably happen, but it’s going to be fairly slow. I’m trying my best to learn a lot in as little as three months, but I still have to put in an hour of work every single day just to get anywhere.

If I look into the future, I’m demotivated. As a society, we want results, and we want them now. Gym results won’t happen overnight, and neither will learning a new language. Instead of good old self discipline and motivation, however, you can just shorten your timeframe.

You see, when I know it’s going to take up to 6 months for anyone to even notice I’ve been working out, it makes me want to give up before I’ve even started. If I know I have to take protein shakes every single day for months, I don’t even want to buy a blender to make them.

Instead, if I just focus on what I have to do TODAY, then I can easily achieve my long-term goals. I’m not worried about where I will find my hour to learn Dutch tomorrow. I’m not worried about how early I have to wake up to get all my meals in for the next few months. All I care about is finding my hour today, and doing what I need to do to make things happen.

The future of my goals barely enters my reality.

It’s not hard to wake up early today. It might be tomorrow, but I’m not thinking about it. It’s not hard to write a blog post today. It might be tomorrow, but why think about it. It’s not hard for you to do what is necessary to achieve your goals today. And really, it won’t even be hard tomorrow, if you’re thinking about today.

Just as you probably won’t even try to beat the power walking world record for two laps of the track due to lack of belief, if you don’t think you can do something for a length of time, then you won’t even try. Instead, use the confidence from knowing that you can do what you need to do today, and use that to turn your goals into reality.

My turning point came one evening when I set myself a very simple task. My task was to note down every single productive action I had taken that that day. Of course, it didn’t include eating food and chatting to friends, but things like writing blog posts, sending emails, and that kind of thing.

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Needless to say, when I wrote down my productive actions for the day in question, I was shocked. My list was absolutely tiny. A days’ work of productive tasks could probably have been completed in the space of an hour or 2, at the most.

After this point, it became natural for me to start putting the work in. My procrastination decreased, my output increased, and my to-do-list was getting completed very quickly every day. Quite simply, this very simple task of recording what I had done made me angry at the amount of work I was putting in and then things quickly changed course.

For a few weeks, everything was great.

I was starting to put in hours similar to the time when I was fighting to keep my online income stable and making sure that I didn’t have to look for another job.

Then, quite gradually, my work rate started decreasing again. I was spending more time chatting to friends online, browsing Facebook, watching TV, and other rarely useful activities. It was probably this slump which prompted me to try out my 7 day self-discipline challenge.

My self-discipline challenge resulted in renewed productivity but, like before, my output levels started to dip. Then I remembered the task that had worked so well for me previously. It probably hadn’t clicked earlier because, at the time, it was so natural for me to get back into the swing of things that I didn’t think to credit it to my success.

Therefore, I took things a step further.

30 Days of Activity Journaling

For the month of June (last month), I decided to take this simple action that had worked so well and step it up a gear. Instead of just recording down my actions for one day, I simply recorded all of my activities, every day, for an entire month. My journaling wasn’t about noting down my emotions, project ideas or anything else. It was simply there to be used as a log for all of the productive tasks I had done in that day.

The service I used for this journaling was Penzu, my new favourite online notepad. It is very basic and is simply for jotting down text that doesn’t need formatting, hyperlinks or anything like that. It certainly won’t be for everyone, but for this process, it was perfect.

To cut a long month short, June was without question, the most productive month of my life.

In the space of a month I managed to write, and launch, a 69 page eBook (Blogging Blueprint), write 16 blog posts, perform countless tasks I had been putting off, and put some much needed time into my affiliate sites which had lost their rankings in Google (which, thankfully, are now back).

You would expect the kind of wording I have used, “the most productive month of my life,” to result in some kind of product promotion. But, really, I have absolutely nothing to promote. I know this probably sounds too simple to believe, but the results speak for themselves.

If you head over to Google Blog Search and type my name, you will find countless places I’ve been featured for guest posts, interviews and so on. There’s also nowhere to hide as far as my productivity goes for this blog. My writing is available for everyone to see.

What Do You Have to Lose?

I have spent the end of June and the first few day of July in a new city which meant that my schedule changed quite a bit and I wasn’t able to keep up this process. However, now that I’m back ‘home,’ I have started it again immediately. Based on the results of June, I would be stupid not to.

The reason I believe this works so well is because you probably won’t like what you see. If you want to feel like you’ve had a productive day but without looking at the cold hard facts, then this is not for you. I, on the other hand, generally make more money by putting in more time, so like to stay active.

To follow along, your job is simple. Simply write down a log somewhere, whether online or off, that lists all the productive activities you have done in one day. If you’re anything like me, you’ll see a list of actions or tasks, but know that the list is far shorter than it could be.

This isn’t about turning your life into some robotic, workaholic schedule. It’s simply about utilising the time that you do dedicate to your working efforts and making the most of them. Once you’ve done it for one day, see if you can commit to trying this out for an entire month. If you can give this a go, I’m very positive you’ll see great results.

What do you have to lose?