Be dependent on success. Attach everything to the success of your performance. Say, “If I don’t come through here, I’m a failure. I suck. I’m not good at what I do.”

If you do that, watch yourself tense up. Watch your performance go downhill. Watch yourself get even more tense as you try to save yourself from failure.

More often than not, your tension will end up being your downfall. At the end of your performance, you’ll look at yourself and think, “Well, I lost. I failed. Now I’m not good at anything, and I’m just a failure,” and so on, until you end up shredding your self-concept into a million pieces and think of yourself as the most incompetent human being to ever walk the earth.

Attachment to the outcome – staking your self-esteem on your performance – did you in.

Unhealthy Attachment

When we attach ourselves to the outcome and stake our self-worth to our performance during a certain event, we tense up because of the burden of our own expectations. We can’t relax because we think that, in order to still have some self-esteem after this event, we need to perform at our best. The prospect of living a life without any self-esteem or sense of self-worth (at least temporarily) makes our minds feel under pressure – because they are.

Think about it this way: what if the person you loved the most told you that, unless you came got a very lucrative, prestigious job that you applied to, they wouldn’t loved you anymore? Their love would be tied to your performance in securing a job. How ridiculous does that sound? Isn’t it inane to think that anyone could tie their love to something as arbitrary as getting a high-level job?

Want to know what you call those kinds of relationships? Unhealthy. (Readers, if the person you love the most would stop loving you over something similar, I’d reevaluate your relationship with that person and ask yourself whether you actually love them or even if you want them in your life)

Well, every single time you get attached to the outcome, you’re doing exactly that to yourself.

You’re saying, “Okay, self, if you don’t get an A on this paper, I won’t love you anymore, and I certainly won’t treat you with respect. If you screw this up, I’ll never trust you again to do anything. I won’t want anything to do with you, but I guess I’ll endure the pain of being stuck with you forever because you’re all I’ve got. But I won’t like it.”

Which puts a ton of psychological pressure on your mind. You are, with this paper (in my example) fighting for your own self-esteem. While that’s a tremendous motivator – that’s why we attach ourselves to the outcome in the first place; we think high risk = high reward – it’s also very unhealthy.

Relaxation, Not Tension, Leads to Better Performance

The lesson to be learned here is that relaxation, not tension, creates better performance. 

Making your body tense up by being attached to the outcome is a good way in the short term to improve energy levels, but, in the end, the stress ends up compromising your ability to perform.

By relaxing, on the other hand, and not caring much about the outcome, you can let yourself perform to the best of your ability. Your movements become effortless instead of being tense. Your relaxation response kicks in, leading to better decision-making.

If you stay in the moment, breathe deeply, and care little about the outcome, you’ll end up triggering your relaxation response (google it to learn more). The relaxation response nullifies most of the harmful effects of tension, like fatigue, irritability, muscle soreness, and lack of focus.

In order to trigger the relaxation response in the moment, you need to do exactly that: relax. Breathe deeply. Let go of the tension that you feel in your body. Feel free of the burden of expectations, instead of trying to stake your self-worth on them.

By doing that, you’ll actually perform at your best, instead of sabotaging yourself.

Of course, by perpetually focusing on getting the thing I’m doing done so I can move onto the next thing, I’m never really focused on or enjoying the thing I’m doing in the present – for example, writing this post. I’m worried about reading Infinite Jest later (which is an awesome, awesome book, by the way), and after that, working out, and after that, meditating, and after that, cleaning up my RSS feeds, my twitter feed, and realigning my life on the Internet so I can do what I need to do in order to make this blog grow more and enjoy myself along the way (I’ve been getting burnt out a little bit). I can guarantee you that when I finish this post and start reading Infinite Jest, I’ll be worried about finishing my reading on time so I can go work out. And while I’m working out, I’ll be pushing myself to go faster so I’ll have more time to meditate. And so on, until I’m a big ball of rushed anxiety.

This is why, in order to enjoy the task you’re working on, all you have to do is slow down and enjoy the process. You’ll be amazed at how fast time flies when you slow down and your’e actually enjoying yourself.

I’m Always Looking at the Second Slice of Pizza. Really.

This reminds me of an anecdote from the novel The Fortress of Solitude (note: it was okay. Worth reading? Eh, maybe, just because Lethem’s writing is so great at parts). It describes the situation very, very well:

”There’s a story I like to tell,” said Brodeur. “When I was a boy I used to love pizza, and whenever my father took me to the pizzeria I’d order two slices. And I’d sit and he’d watch me wolfing down the first slice with my eyes on the second. I wasn’t even tasting that first slice. And one day my father said to me, ‘Son, you need to learn that while you’re eating the first slice of pizza, eat the first slice. Because right now you’re eating the second slice before you’ve finished the first.’ And a year ago I realized that I needed that lesson again. I took a look at my life and realized I had my eye on the second slice of pizza.”

By doing things the way I do them, I’m looking at the second slice while I’m eating the first. I’m not even tasting the first slice since I’m so focused on getting to the next level and doing the next thing that needs to be done. By not tasting the slice, I’m not enjoying the things I’m doing enough – I’m not letting myself enjoy them because I see them as burdens that eat up my time, and nothing more.

This is why efficiency is overrated. Enjoyment should come first. And, plus, if you’re doing something important – something like work where you normally really want to get it done quickly – you owe it to yourself to slow down and enjoy the ride.

Hitting the Bullseye

Signal vs. Noise had another awesome post on this very thing the other day. Kay P wrote:

Then my trainer asked me what I would do if I had three darts, had already thrown two, and I only had one shot left at hitting the bullseye.

I told him I’d slow down. I’d take a deep breath, measure the distance, mock a few practice throws back and forth, settle in, focus, and throw. I wouldn’t rush up there and just toss the thing.

And it clicked for me. When you really want to do something right, which is usually what you should be striving for, you tend to slow down.

If you want to hit the bullseye, it only makes sense for you to slow down, and focus.

This also means that any and all distractions have to get thrown out the window if you’re going to do a good job at anything. Could you aim at the bullseye with your dart, get focused, then take a phone call?

No.

In fact, if you were intent on hitting the bullseye and someone called you as you were aiming and getting yourself ready to hit the bullseye, you’d probably ignore the call. You’d be so honed in on your target that the unimportant distraction – the phone call – wouldn’t even have an effect on you. You’d tune it out.

Then why do we let ourselves get so distracted in our work? Why do we constantly look forward to the next thing that we have to do, instead of slowing down, focusing, and ignoring all the irrelevant stuff that’s threatening the very quality of our work and life?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we like the idea of “taking breaks”. Maybe it’s because we don’t know how much those breaks are hurting not only our productivity, but the quality of our work. (Ironically, someone just came and interrupted me as I was writing this part, and I lost my entire train of thought, even though I was only distracted for a little while. See – distractions kill.)

Slow down, hit the bullseye, and taste the first slice of pizza. Your taste buds, your boss, and your conscience will thank you later.

Unfortunately, quitting renders all the time you spent and all the frustration you had meaningless. All those sleepless nights, cringe-worthy meetings, and the tens or hundreds of hours dedicated to getting things done? All gone. Don’t mean anything.

So, of course, you have to press on in spite of your growing sense of frustration and hopelessness. But, in order to do so and keep yourself sane, you have to change the way that you’re doing your project. If you keep doing what you’re doing and press on valiantly, sure – you’ll get the project done. But, by the end, you won’t be doing your work to its fullest potential. You’re going to experience “burn-out” even more, with greater frustration and resentment for the work that has to be done. You’ll be cutting corners and taking shortcuts just so the project gets done. Not good – that’s why burn-out is so tricky to manage.

What’s Causing the Burn-Out?

Quite simply, your obsession with the end result of the project – completion – is what’s making you burn out.

If you keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing without taking a break or even generating some positive emotions along the way, you’re going to start to let the frustration get to you and start questioning the usefulness of what you’re doing.

The way your mind is set up is in what I like to call the Big Win mindset.

For a person in a “big win” mindset, the only thing that is worth celebrating – the only thing worth feeling good about – is the final product. It’s the grade on their test, how well their book is received, how much money they’re making, and so on. They don’t see the work and creativity that went into their project as worthwhile or something to be proud of. Their only concern, again, is what their work and creativity produced – and that’s very unhealthy.

The Big Win mindset results in burn-out because the people who have it are constantly waiting for the end of the project so they can finally celebrate a job well done. That means that they keep all their energy inside, pent up, during the entirety of the project. Without a positive outlet – they’ll refuse to say anything remotely positive until it’s done – their positive energy turns into negativity because the project prevents them from expressing any positive emotions since they can’t “celebrate” their Big Win until after it’s done.

Because the project quite literally is the cause of their inability to let themselves feel good, they begin to resent it. What happens as a result?

Burn-out. If you’re putting off feeling good about yourself and your work until the project is done, you’re going to burn-out. Trust me. I’ve done it hundreds of times.

The Burn-Out Cure

The cure to burn-out, as you’ve probably figured out already, is to celebrate everything that you do related to a project – I call this the Little Victory mindset.

In the Little Victory mindset, you keep yourself motivated and feeling good to finish a project because you will let yourself experience positive emotions for every little thing you complete that’s related to your project.

Whereas the Big Win mindset says, “Well, doing the little stuff is useless if the whole project doesn’t get done,” the Little Victory mindset counters, “But each little thing adds up to the whole. Why not feel good about them? They’re like projects in their own right.”

And that’s really how I approach projects now – and I feel so much better while doing them. No longer am I dreading the project plateau – that time when we feel like giving up and pursuing a new shiny idea because what we’re doing is no longer working.

Instead, take the time to let yourself feel good whenever you complete a part of a project – celebrating your Little Victories. That way, you won’t build up the resentment and faitgue that accompanies burn-out.

You’ll be replacing burn-out with positive momentum – feedback that serves to move your project forward instead of grinding it to a halt.

Let’s face it – if you like what you’re doing, you’re going to be more excited to do it all the time, and you’re going to feel better when you do it.

You start to burn out because you feel negative emotions in connection with your project.

The solution, then, is to get to the source of those bad emotions – the Big Win mindset – and replace it with a Little Victory mindset.

At its core, it’s this: always be willing to go the extra mile, to do what others might deem ‘unreasonable’, to do the right thing.

Why? Because, my friends, that’s just what you do. Doing what’s right and spending the extra energy to make sure it gets done should be a part of you, something that’s just part of your identity. It should be automatic.

Now – getting to that point isn’t easy. In fact, it’s incredibly difficult, since you’ll be fighting the temptation to give in and only give what’s deemed “good enough”.

But you have to tell yourself that being “good enough” just isn’t good enough anymore. Being you – a person of power, respect, love, creativity, and integrity – demands more. It demands a higher standard – not perfection, but the willingness to go above and beyond what others expect of you to produce something excellent.

In the Way You Do Anything, You Do Everything

If the world could be changed by thought alone, we’d be moving things with our minds.

Action is the only thing that can produce any sort of lasting change on the world, because it makes your thoughts manifest themselves in reality.

The attitude you have when taking action ultimately determines the quality of whatever you end up doing.

Are you going to accept anything less than your best? If you do at least once, then you’re going to set up a pattern of inconsistency, where sometimes you really shine, and others – you don’t.

This is why they say “In the way you do anything, you do everything.” Excellence is a habit, as Aristotle so astutely pointed out. Consistency is what separates the men from the boys. If you want to be great and not just good, becoming consistently excellent is the price you have to pay – but the rewards are immense.

So, even when you’re feeling your worst, things aren’t going right, or you’re just not motivated to do work, you still have to show up and prove your emotions wrong. You have to prove that, despite the nausea and the cramps, you can still try to do your best work.

It’s all a game, with one rule: if anything holds you back from giving your best effort, you lose.

Will you perform at your best? Probably not. However, if you go into it with the determination and the belief that, no matter how you feel, you are still going to try your best, you will still perform much better than if you had just wallowed in your misery.

The key isn’t to be perfect all the time, or even be perfect at all.

No, what separates the true professionals from the rest of us is that they make the best out of what they have. They’re not excellent every time they work. Sometimes, they’re not even great. Or good. But the key is, whenever they sit down and do anything, they have the attitude to get the most out of whatever they’re doing.

And, even when they’re about to break, they always go one step further. They go beyond everyone else’s expectations to provide something better than just “good”. They make it great with their willingness to put the extra work in, whether that’s taking some personal time out of their day to help a client or putting some finishing touches on their blog post, even when they thought it was ‘done’.

Because, they think, that’s what pros do. So they do it.

And that’s what you can do, too – if you’re willing to make the commitment.

Becoming a professional at living life is scary because there aren’t any more excuses. You can’t throw in the towel on doing work or even having fun for the day just because you woke up with a headache. Now, you’re gonna have to wake up, take some Advil with your morning cup o’ joe, and you’re going to have to face the day and give your all.

Why? When that day comes, you’ll say to yourself, “Well, that’s just what I do.”

Action Steps!

1. From now on, no matter what you feel like, show up for your work (and your life) and give all that you have.

2. Smile in satisfaction to yourself when you go to bed each night because you know you made the most of your day, no matter how you felt or what went wrong.

Why? I believe in becoming a complete human being. One that has strengths in every area, and weaknesses in as few as possible.

Becoming a complete human is the end of all self-improvement. It is the goal that we are always striving for – to become a balanced, good person across every aspect of our lives. A true jack-of-all-trades or the archetypal Renaissance man is what I’ve tried to become – and I think everyone in the self-improvement game will trend towards becoming one themselves. It’s part of the natural process.

Becoming a complete human being requires being very good in every ‘sphere’ of life – it requires having integrity and being an honest person; having diverse knowledge of a wide range of subjects; being in excellent shape; having solid relationships with yourself, family, and friends; having a career that you enjoy; having hobbies and skills that you practice regularly and are competent at; and being able to maintain a life of balance.

I don’t think that there can be anything more rewarding than becoming a complete human being. Being the total package allows you to have the broadest experience of life possible – something I think is very valuable. Being complete also makes you a very strong, competent individual – being so good in every part of your life will prevent a total breakdown should something go wrong in one part of your life. In essence, your mental well-being is not predicated upon just one ‘sphere’ of your life – rather, it is broken up into every part of your life, leading to flexibility and mental fortitude.

Let’s break all the different spheres of living down, one by one.

Having Integrity

Having integrity, as I’ve said before, is the foundation of living a good life.

Building integrity is like building trust: it takes a long time to make, and a very short time to lose.

It requires total honesty in action – doing what you truly want to do – and a belief in yourself that transcends the opinions of any other person.

How to build integrity, you ask? Just act on what you believe in, over and over again, every day. Give yourself credit for your effort, rather than the results of your effort. Your effort is under your control, the results are not.

Be gentle with yourself, but give yourself a kick in the pants when you know you’re not following your values. Be a kind master over yourself – how you talk to (and perceive) yourself will ultimately be reflected in your actions.

If you do the right thing, over and over again – being true to yourself, not caring what people think, not being torn by emotion – you will see your self-trust and personal integrity rise. It takes the cumulative effect of days’ and days’ worth of effort, but the kind of internal satisfaction you get from being a person of integrity and honesty is simply unparalleled.

Cultivating a Knowledge Base

It’s not my intention for people to read this post and say to themselves, “Alright, I have to have diverse knowledge of a wide range of subjects. So… Uh… I guess I’m gonna go read like 10 random articles from Wikipedia per day, so I know lots of stuff! Yeah!”

Uh… No.

A true Renaissance Man would not acquire knowledge just for the sake of it – they would be propelled by their own curiosity and interest in the subjects that they’d study.

Let’s face it: you’re never going to know everything. So stick to the subjects that you’re genuinely interested in – something that you’re naturally curious about.

For me, I’m a history, psychology, business, tech and sports geek, so I read a lot on those subjects. I love all of them for different reasons – for example, I love finding out why people do what they do, so psychology is a natural fit for me. But I also like seeing how different courses of action can, over the course of years and decades, change society, so I like history (and especially biographies of historical figures). The list goes on and on.

So, what’s the best route to develop a wide base of knowledge? Ask yourself – what would I like to know more about? Write down the various subjects on a piece of paper. After that, go on Amazon and buy some of the top-rated books on that subject. You don’t have to buy academic texts or anything like that – something that’s popular will usually give you a good enough introduction of the subject, and you can decide from there whether you’d like to learn even more about it.

That’s when you can check out blogs (there are blogs on everything out there), forums, other books, and so on, continually learning more and more.

This is organic, natural learning, driven by curiosity rather than external compulsion.

Don’t learn more because I told you to. Learn more because you want to.

Handling Health

Health is way too complex for me to break down, so I’ll give you a few tips to get you started:

1. Buy organic. I’m not going to tell you to eat raw, but eating organic food more often has definitely improved my health, and others’ as well. The less preservatives and pesticides that you ingest, the better. Trust me.

2. Exercise often – or, better yet, play a sport. You don’t want to be worrying about hypertension, blood clots, and heart disease when you get older, do you? Staying in good cardiovascular shape will make your heart stronger, keep your arteries free of plaques, and lower your blood pressure. Oh, and exercise releases endorphins, which make you feel happy.

3. Drink nothing but water. Feel free to indulge in something else from time to time, but the main liquid that you should be putting in your body is water. I routinely drink upwards of 6 liters per day – your mileage may vary. You weren’t made to be drinking fruit juice, soda, and all that other junk. Your body needs water.

4. Get enough sleep. You can play around with polyphasic sleeping if you want (I am doing a bi-phasic schedule right now), but the bottom line is this: get enough so you can feel your best from the time you wake up ’til the time you go to bed.

5. Eat “good” fats. Avoid fast food and overly fatty foods (but meat’s fine). Incorporating good fats from things like olive oil and nuts (especially from almonds and walnuts) help stabilize blood sugar levels, allowing you to have a more consistent energy level throughout the day. Also, nuts make for a great healthy snack that keep hunger away for hours. As a caveat: make sure you eat them raw – you don’t want all the salt from the salted nuts. You can buy raw nuts in bulk at your grocery store for much lower prices, so everyone wins there.

6. Supplement intelligently. Avoid destructive supplements (I’m looking at you, creatine – and yes, I’m aware it’s safe when done right) while supplementing with things that help you. I’m a big proponent of vitamin B complexes for increasing focus and improving brain function, as well as a good antioxidant supplement that includes vitamins A, C, and E, as well as selenium. However – don’t buy these based on my recommendation. Check with your doctor first.

This barely scratches the surface, but I recommend picking up Tim Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Body for other quick tips that can change your health – and your life. There’s something in there for everyone.

Creating Good Relationships

As far as treating yourself goes – never say anything to yourself that you would never tolerate from someone else. Be kind to yourself, as I stated in the section on integrity. This simple rule will make your relationship with yourself much, much better.

When it comes to building relationships with others, here are a few simple rules:

1. Your input = your output: If you put little to no effort or energy into developing the relationship, you won’t be able to develop a strong relationship. If you talk with people often, do things with them, and just have fun in their presence, the relationship will grow in strength over time. Don’t expect to talk to someone once or twice and expect them to think of you as a great friend – great relationships take time to develop.

2. Be a great listener: If you’re good at listening to others, you’ll become much better at relating to them, which means that you’ll have a stronger relationship faster. Being a great listener also helps you build trust, which is my next point…

3. Be trustworthy: If you can be the type of person that’s like a Swiss Bank account (virtually impenetrable) for your friends’ secrets, then your friends will sense this and will trust you so much more as a result. I’ve been burned on this before over things I didn’t know were secrets, so if your friend is telling you anything sensitive, I urge you to ask them whether the things they’ve told you should considered confidential. It’ll save your relationships. Trust takes a long time to build up and a long time to lose.

4. Find the good in others – and put a spotlight on it: If you become good at finding out the best attributes of others’ personalities and making them show it, you will become a social dynamo. It’s difficult to do, but if you master the art of reading people and truly understanding their personalities, you will make them feel very good and at ease around you. Listening to your friends allows you to do this – if you know Jesse makes killer deadpan jokes, set him up for some by including threads he can use in your conversation. If you know Clara is quiet normally, but becomes really outspoken and excited whenever discussion revolves around music, make an effort to talk about music when you’re out with her. It’s all about listening to the emotions running under people’s words, and if you can make them feel good around you, they’ll love you for it. Of course – don’t do this in a manipulative way, but do it because you want to see them happy. However…

5. Make your needs clear: If you don’t make your needs clear in the relationship, then you’re bound to be let down. People will take whatever you’re giving them without giving much in return sometimes, and only you have the power to call them out on it and say that they need to invest some more effort into your relationship. If they refuse, then you’ll realize that they weren’t really a good friend to begin with.

Having a Career You Enjoy

I don’t have many tips here, as I don’t really have much of a career to speak of and it’d be wrong of me to suggest anything that has never worked for me.

However, there are a few things that I believe:

• Life is too short to have a job you hate;
• You should be doing work that you find personally fulfilling;
• You can “do” more than one thing and switch careers, no matter how old you are;
• “Job security” is a sham and risk is everywhere, no matter what industry you’re in;
• Entrepreneurship is a great route for those who are very independent, driven, and have a creative vision that they need to fulfill;
• There are plenty of ways to make money – even on the side.

Overall, I’m a little out of my depth here, but there are a few blogs I can recommend for finding your passion, making money, and keeping more of it: Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Neil Patel at Quick Sprout, Pam Slim from Escape From Cubicle Nation, and Dave Garland of The Rise to the Top are all fantastic resources.

Hobbies and Skills

This is probably the easiest section for people to get handled.

I think that having a ‘craft’ from outside of your work that you can get better at over time and practice as a way to relax (and develop mastery) is necessary. Having at least one of those things on top of your other obligations as an aspiring Renaissance Man is incredibly useful – you get to track your progress over time, which is immensely rewarding, and it serves as a constructive break from the rest of the world.

Even picking up a new hobby from scratch, with no prior experience, is something that can transform your life for the better. Don’t be afraid of being bad when you start – everyone is. Instead, embrace the opportunity to learn and to make yourself into a master at whatever you decide you’re going to do.

Need a hobby? How about: martial arts, photography, painting, drawing, any sport, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, logic puzzles (Sudoku/Kakuro), watching movies, writing, any musical instrument, (break)dancing, skiing/snowboarding, gardening, cooking, building stuff (whatever you can think of!), woodworking, sailing, singing, knitting, sewing, and magic tricks? Pick one. Or you can always google something like ‘hobbies’ and find something that meets your desire.

Maintaining Balance

The really difficult part about becoming a complete human is living a life of balance – making sure all the components of being that complete person can coexist in your life.

I’ll admit: I’m not a very balanced person by nature. I like diving into things headfirst and immersing myself in projects for long periods of time, then becoming more extroverted and being social while I ‘recharge’, then going back to work.

The key that I’m finding is creating habits that reinforce your Renaissance Man “training” is the easiest way to maintain a life of balance.

That is, you have to “schedule” your time to develop your relationships, the time that you’re going to develop your knowledge base, and so on.

If you make inviolable times during your week to do these things, over time, balance will become a habit.

Since this is a little abstract, here’s an example: let’s say that, every day, work effectively takes up my free time until 6 pm, and my “real” free time falls from 6:30 to 10:30 P.M.

Every Monday and Wednesday night, I’m going to devote 3 of those 4 hours to learning and one hour doing whatever I want to do.

Every Thursday night and Friday evening, I’m going to devote my time to my skills and hobbies.

Every Friday night and Saturday afternoon/evening, I’m going to go out with my friends, and I’ll chat with them as part of my free time during the week.

Every Sunday, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, for the entire day. The only rule is I can’t think about work, and I have to be doing something I enjoy.

All the while, I’m going to be eating well and getting my sleep.

To stay in shape, I’m going to go on runs every Monday and Friday morning, while I hit the gym on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

If you hold up this schedule for about a month, it’ll become a habit, and you’ll have no problem whatsoever maintaining your balance. The key is to let yourself break your own rules a little bit, but not so much that you throw your life out of balance for anything short of an emergency.

However – sometimes, balance isn’t necessary and can actually harm you. For reasons why imbalance might actually be the answer, check out this post from Jonathan Mead.

Action Steps

They’re everywhere in this post – close your eyes, scroll up, stop, and open your eyes. Look! Action steps!

What do you think about becoming a “complete human”? Is it a flight of fancy? Or something we all should aspire to be? Is becoming a jack-of-all-trades viable in an economy where specialists are becoming more and more important?

It’s easy to think that I’m some guru (I’m not) with the ability to change people for the better.

It’s easy to think that I hold all the responsibility for changing you, that my content is what will cause you to change yourself over time so you can live a better and easier life.

It’s easy to think all of this because it deflects responsibility from yourself. Since the job of changing yourself is in my hands, you don’t need to put any effort in; you figure that whenever you get the ideas in your head that you need in order to live better, you’ll automatically change, with no extra effort. You think it’ll be as simple and as effortless as flicking a switch.

Wrong. I can only show you what is possible, what ideas work, and what practices we can use to improve ourselves.

It is up to you to act.

Theory Is Useless!

As an avid consumer of self-development literature, I can tell you one thing – I’ve wasted countless hours poring over everyone’s work, taking the ideas I liked, going through imagined scenarios in my head.

Why? Because I spent more time consuming the material itself than I did applying its principles. Sure, I started to think that I knew something, because I started to repeat the principles in my head over and over again.

But, all in all, 99% of the things I read were a waste of time, because I didn’t put things to use in the real world.

The mere act of thinking that you are enough is useless if you don’t believe it.

Knowing how to be productive is useless if you allow yourself to get distracted every 5 minutes.

Knowing that authenticity is the only way to truly live your life is useless if you still tell people white lies and seek their approval everywhere you go.

Again – it’s one thing to know these principles. But just knowing them is only 1% of the battle. The other 99%? Overcoming the block between theory and action, and actually making those ideas real through committed action.

Despite what the heading for this section says, theory is actually is actually important. However, it is useless on its own, without action.

Bridging the Gap

If you need more evidence on how useless theory really is, consider this:

Why have you accumulated most of your knowledge throughout life? Having a love for learning is one thing, but most of the time we learn something, we’re learning as a means to an end.

That is, we learn facts – accumulate knowledge – mostly in order to find out how to put something into action or do something. You learn to cook so you can eat. You learn things in school so you could do well on tests and (hopefully) use them later in life.

In the case of skills where mastery is a goal, you learn them for their own sake – doing them brings you joy and fulfillment, so you don’t care about the application.

However, consuming information – especially the type found on this blog and on other personal development blogs – is not one of those. It’s not really a skill.

You consume information in order to apply it later on.

And you only consume information that you know will improve your life in some way. If you aren’t consuming in order to improve your life, then you’re probably doing it to kill time, which is no good (waste time and time will waste you). If you read some website – especially the likes of facebook – and your eyes glaze over, wasting hours and hours of time doing nothing that brings you fun, fulfillment, or any kind of reward, you are wasting your life – not just your time.

And if you’re consuming the information with the intent to improve your life but you don’t apply the principles you learn at all, guess what?

You’re killing time. That time, spent consuming information you won’t even be able to recall – nevermind use – a week from now? Absolutely, utterly wasted.

Theory is useless if it sits in your brain. Or if you forget it.

The question that’s scary to ask is this: what’s the difference between something you know, but don’t use, and something you don’t know?

Answer: nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why it’s so important to apply everything you read – or, at least, apply everything you think might benefit you.

If you read an article on the absolutely incredible benefits of snorting cocaine, would you go track down the nearest drug dealer and buy some, since you have to apply what you learn? No. You have to use your discretion – cocaine’s incredibly addictive and is not something that anyone should dabble with, no matter how great anyone says it is.

Similarly, I’m not asking anyone to apply absolutely everything they learn or stop learning about cool things that inspire them You don’t have to learn with a purpose all the time – but, here, in self-development land where many people’s biggest problem is that they simply consume, consume, and consume some more, but never apply what they learn, resulting in zero improvement.

The Four Horsemen of Inaction

Want to know why you’re not acting? Chances are, one of the four horsemen below are one of the reasons.

1. Success barriers: Many people may think they want to improve themselves, but, really, they don’t, largely because they identify with their flaws. For example, for someone who has relationship problems, they may come here (or any other self-development blog) in order to try and fix them, but because they actually get lots of enjoyment from the drama and retelling their sob stories to their friends, they won’t actually help themselves. They don’t want to be fixed because, even though they recognize that what they’re doing doesn’t really work, they get a large benefit out of it (usually social) that they’d lose if they set themselves right.

However, success barriers also can be put up for people because they don’t know what will become of them after they succeed. They might think that if they succeed, there’s going to a be a lot more pressure on them to “perform” or maintain their success. They’ll then do everything to sabotage their own success (even at a subconscious level), since they don’t want to stand out and have the spotlight on them.

2. Endless study and overcomplicating things: Some people think that self-development and creating a better life for yourself is ridiculously hard, like disarming a nuclear bomb, or designing a space shuttle, or creating world peace. As such, they think they’ll never know enough about self-help, so they read absolutely everything. The catch is, they’ll never stop trying to learn new things – they always think the “next” epiphany they get from reading yet another book will make life heaven on earth for them – so they never actually take the time to apply it.

What happens then? They think that the material they’re consuming isn’t benefiting them at all, so they consume more material, thinking that that’ll help them. They don’t end up applying it, though, and end up continuing the endless cycle of studying.

3. The magic pill trap: Some people ignore the fact that changing your life for the better – which is the cumulative effect of lots of small changes – takes a lot of time. They’re impatient, so they want to get the biggest results in the shortest amount of time (to be honest, this attitude is good when used correctly).

They then begin to search for the magic pill, the one change that will change everything for them. However, they only try something out for a few days or a week, and then scrap it if it doesn’t bring them the results that they want. This ignores the fact that some things only bring a benefit after an extended period of time.

To use a familiar analogy: you wouldn’t go to the gym twice and complain that you’re not making any gains, right? It usually takes longer than that (especially when using conventional training methods) to make any sorts of gains in the weight room. The people looking for the magic pill think they’ll get ripped after one session, which is totally unrealistic.

4. Information paralysis: Sometimes, knowing less is better than being a walking, talking, breathing self-development encyclopedia. When we know too much, we endlessly debate which course of action is better, instead of taking action and figuring out things later. This is where overthinking becomes routine, and we endlessly play mindgames with ourselves, trying to use our crystal balls to see into the future.

The problem is our predictions are usually wildly inaccurate.

As a general rule, acting is better than not. When confronted by information paralysis, don’t be afraid to shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak. Even if you make a mistake, you won’t lose anything – you’ll just get better insight as to what works and what doesn’t.

Consumption Should Expand Your Reality

If the point of this post is to make you replace consumption with action, what should the remainder of our consumption do? What purpose should it serve?

Ideally, the bulk of your information consumption should expand your reality – to inform you of what is truly possible and what is going on in the world.

Why do so many people languish in poor life situations when they have all they need to get themselves out of it?

They don’t know what is possible. If they knew that with enough effort and guile that they could escape their unhealthy lives, they would be much more likely to do it.

Similarly, your own information consumption should primarily show you what is possible – it should expand your reality to show you your own potential, and the potential of the human race as a whole.

This can be applied in more ways than you think. For example, you read blogs like PluginID to see what actions you can take to improve your life, and why they work. That’s expanding your reality.

Essentially, anything that you learn does expand your reality, because your understanding of the world grows. However, that “expansion” of your reality is only useful if it is applicable to your life in some way.

If it doesn’t benefit you at all, throw it out – but, at the same time, that oversimplifies things. Sometimes, aimless reading can help you immensely, especially when ideas from different disciplines converge and give you an even greater understanding of the world. A more nuanced approach is necessary – so I’d say that drastically limiting your aimless consumption is the way to go, but feel free to break the rules when you have to. You’re not a machine; you’re a free (wo)man. Don’t be afraid to make your own decisions.

Aligning Your Action To Your Desires and Values

Even though I’ve included some action steps for you to take at the end of this post (scroll down until you see the “Action Steps!” heading), it’s still necessary to take actions that I’m not going to prescribe.

My recommendations are general and aren’t tailored to you, the individual. In order to get motivated to take action, you must be taking action that will benefit you in a way that you desire.

That is, you have to start scratching your own itch and see where it takes you.

What do you want out of life? Better health? Hit the gym 4 times per week, without fail. Better relationships? Spend more time with the people who matter most to you and have fun with them. Better sense of self-esteem? Earn it through doing things that you approve of – things that align with your values. This goes on and on with the things that you want to improve on.

The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination

However, there are is a caveat here: if you’re coming from a frame of taking action as a means to an end, you’re going to get burned out and end up resenting taking action over and over again. You’ll end up hating taking action and creating the life you desire is going to get harder and harder.

Thus, you should learn to enjoy the process of improving, no matter what you’re doing. That way, whenever you take action as a means to an end – say, going to the gym in order to get to better shape – you actually end up enjoying the activity itself. That way, you’ll resist it much less, and improving will be much, much smoother.

That is, you have to learn to like doing things you hate. If you can learn to find enjoyment in the things that you’ll need to do in order to create the life you desire, then your growth will be accelerated and much easier to come by.

How does one begin to like the things they hate?

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Find one positive emotion the activity brings out in you, and focus on it. Odds are, we resist doing things out of fear. If we expect ourselves to feel good while doing something, then our natural resistance to doing something goes down. Cultivating mindfulness and meditating allow you to access positive emotions pretty much anywhere if you have the presence of mind to tap into them, so you can hack your mind into believing you’ll feel good because you’re doing something, when you really can choose to feel good all the time.

2. Make a game out of it. If you have a competitive streak at all, this is the way to go. Make a set of metrics for your activity – statistics that you can track every time you do it. For example, at the gym you can track the relative intensity of your workout on cardio machines, or your maximum weight on the 3 core lifts (deadlift, bench, squat). If you’re a writer, you can keep track of how many words you write per day. If your goal is to do better in school, you can record the correlation between the quality and quantity of your studying and your performance on tests. If you don’t have anything you can track for a certain activity, you can still track whether you do something or not. Beating your internal resistance is something worth tracking for sure.

After doing it about 5 times, you’ll be hooked on stat-tracking, and you’ll want to beat your “high scores” every time you participate in an activity, so you can see your improvement in real-time.

3. Have a friend do it with you. If you hate doing something, you might as well bring a friend along for the ride as well to help lighten the load. If they’re going to be doing the same activity as you (or you both want to improve in a certain area), you might as well do it together.

4. Develop your own style. If you can’t do any of the above, I recommend trying to make everything that you do during that thing that you hate an extension of your personality – a way for you to express yourself. If you can make your own style while doing something that you hate, then you’ll find yourself enjoying it in no time at all. The key is to make the process fun for you. Amuse yourself, talk to yourself, do whatever it takes to make doing whatever it is you have to do fun. If you can get the skill of self-amusement down, you’ll be able to beat your internal resistance every single time, since everything becomes a source of fun for you. Oh, and if you need instructions on how to have fun, you’re on your own.

Act. Act. Act.

Trust me – there’s nothing worse than looking back at yourself after absorbing all this self-development material, asking yourself, “Have I really changed?” and getting “No,” back as an answer.

Start taking action. Relentlessly. If you take action in order to reinforce the self-development ideas in your brain, you’ll end up much stronger as a result.

Put another way: you wouldn’t read tons of articles about losing weight and expect to lose it automatically, would you?

Nope. You’d know that you’d have to go to the gym and change your diet in order to enact the changes you’ve read about.

Speaking of which, in order to encourage more action, I can promise you this: at the end of every post, from now on, I’ll give you actionable steps that you can put into use immediately in order to apply the principles outlined in the post.

Action Steps!

1. The best thing you can do to improve your life, right now, is to sit down and meditate for 20 minutes. No thinking, just let yourself feel the sensations running around your body. Feel your warmth.

2. Create a “3-second rule” for yourself that helps enforce taking action. Whenever you’re deliberating about doing something, make sure you give yourself 3 seconds to make a decision and act. This helps destroy procrastination. For example, say you’re like me and you need to get your homework done. As soon as you sit down to your desk (or wherever you do your homework), let’s say you get distracted and go on facebook. When you realize you’re distracted and you have something you need to get done, count down from 3 in your head – during those 3 seconds, you must take action and do your homework, or your honor and integrity are compromised.

3. Make a list of the 5 most important self-development things you need to work on – for example, the idea that you’re enough, total elimination of distractions, daily meditation as a practice, not reacting to things that bother you, and exercising 5 days per week could be a list. Write them down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and put it somewhere where you’ll look at it multiple times per day. After you do that, stop reading all self-development material (including PluginID) for a week – instead of reading, you can focus on doing those 5 things you wrote down.

Ready?

You just have to do it once.

And then do it once more.

And then again. And again. And again. Eventually, it’ll become automatic.

That’s how you build a habit – all you have to do is do something once, then repeat it. But the key here is that you realize that you only really have to do that thing once. Once you do it once, all you have to do after that is do it again. And again.

Basically – if you call a behavior a “habit” when you do it automatically, you can hack the habit-building paradigm by making yourself do it automatically, no matter what. As you do that thing over and over again, you’ll eventually fall into a pattern where you’ll do it without thinking.

The best way to hack habit-building? Give yourself a trigger for your habit.

Building A Trigger

As I said before, when you’re building a habit, what you actually want to do is to make yourself do the action that your new habit requires automatically, so you can be absolutely sure that you’ll repeat the action as many times as you’d like on a given day. The more you repeat the action, the faster you’ll make the action habitual.

The best way to make yourself “automatically” do it – by making yourself obliged to do it – is to give your habit what I call a ‘trigger’. A trigger is a signal or event that will make you do the thing that you want to do.

Say you want to build the habit of daily exercise. To make that happen, you can make your trigger 5:30 P.M. (a time). You’ll say to yourself something like, “Okay, as soon as 5:30 rolls around, I’m going to go to the gym. I want to build this habit of exercising.” You’ll be watching the clock, and when the clock strikes 5:30, you’re obliged to go to the gym. If you practice that for a couple of weeks, you’ll be hitting the gym at 5:30 every single day.

Here’s another example: say you want to build the habit of better focus because you get distracted too much. Your trigger can actually be your distraction. Whenever you feel yourself get distracted from your work and look at facebook, twitter, et al, that’s your trigger to take a deep breath, ask yourself, “Is this really what I want to do with my time?”, and go back to whatever you’re doing.

Triggers are that simple, guys. All you have to do is make your trigger happen once per day, and then you’ll be golden.

Remember, you just have to do things once, then you’re done. Only worry about the moment at hand, and you’ll be fine.

Don’t let the requisite two or three weeks of constant action intimidate you. Remember, for right now, you only have to take care of today. Do things once. Then once again. Then once again…

That makes things much simpler. If you automate things with triggers, then you’ll have no excuse to not make something a habit.

The dilemma is: should you even set them?

On one hand, setting goals lets you hone in on what you want to get done, and creates a reward mechanism that lets you feel great after you accomplish your goals. It allows you to focus on what truly needs to get done, and provides a structure by which you can make your dreams come true. I’ll call this the Chris Guillebeau school of goal-setting, since he has a fairly structured model for goal-setting via his annual review.

On the other hand, setting goals comes with a cost – the damaged feeling of self-esteem whenever you do not complete them. Also, if you become obsessed with goal-setting and achieving your goals, you’ll do nothing except chase your goals. You’ll become one-dimensional and lose that valuable time where you can ‘do nothing’, time that frequently results in us generating our best ideas and basking in our gratitude for life. In this way, our goals end up owning us. This is what I call the Jonathan Mead school of goal-setting, since he is a big proponent of the idea that our goals end up owning us.

My question for you, readers, is this – which school of thought do you believe in? I’ll break down the pros and cons of each approach in the rest of the post.

The Chris Guillebeau School

Big idea: big, long-term goals, meticulously tracked, are essential for success.

Pros:

• More direct focus. You have distinct goals that you set, which means that you can pour your focus on your goals because they’re clearly defined. That allows you to focus on your goals completely and block everything out.
• The awesome feeling when you complete your goals. Everyone knows what this is like. If you write down your goal, and achieve it, you feel freakin’ awesome. It’s a glorious experience to have.
• Long-term tracking. If you have an awesome, organized system for setting goals and tracking them like Chris does, then you get to observe your progress over time, which can be helpful to motivate you to reach other goals. It keeps you in a growth mindset, in a way – it helps you realize that you’re constantly improving, because you can see it happen on your goal sheet.
• Better planning. When you know exactly what all your goals are, you can allocate your time and energy in the most effective and efficient way to reach them.

Cons:

• If you don’t succeed, you feel bad. For a lot of people, if you fall short, you feel bad. You feel like you failed to achieve something because, well, you did. Feeling bad for some arbitrary reason – like a mere goal that you set – is not good.
• Only works on measurable things. You can only set real, tangible goals on things that are quantifiable and measurable. Unfortunately, a lot of the best things in life cannot be measured – especially feelings of self-satisfaction and abundance. This also makes you do more of things that may be redundant or necessary. For example, if you’re trying to be more creative, are you really less creative if you read 3 books and write 2 short stories in a month, as opposed to your goal of reading 5 books and writing 4 short stories? Not really. On that same note…
• Your goals are totally arbitrary. As in, the numbers that you set for them are, more or less, completely random – or are based on averages and projections. For example, in order to make a goal, you have to create a number that you have to reach for that goal. Say I want to set a goal for the number of books I want to read in a year. “Well,” I say to myself, “I can read one book per week so if I average that for an entire year I’ll read 52 books. There’s my goal.”

  Unfortunately, that goal is based on an average that may not be doable for the entire year. What if work or family commitments prevent you from reading your book for the week? What if one of the books you choose is a 900 page monster and takes you 3 weeks to finish? The arbitrary number that you set doesn’t care about that.

The Jonathan Mead School

Big idea: Goals end up enslaving us and basing our self-esteem on their accomplishment, not a life well-lived, which is unhealthy. Instead, we should follow what our hearts truly desire and ditch an ego-based goal-striving mindset.

Pros:

• Peace of mind. Unlike when you’re in the Chris Guillebeau school, you won’t base your self-worth on your accomplishments. Instead, your self-esteem will be much more consistent and will not fluctuate depending on how productive you are.
• Focus on passions. Even if you aren’t formally writing down your goals, you’ll still have them – only, they’ll exist in your mind. These goals will be motivated by your passion, because you actually want to do that thing, instead of wanting to do it because you wrote it down on your big annual review sheet. If you truly care about something, you won’t have to declare it as a goal in order to accomplish it. You’ll remember it on its own.
• Allows you to have downtime. With the Chris Guillebeau system of writing down my goals, I end up letting my goals consume my entire life. If I wasn’t working on my goals, I felt bad, so I always was “working” on them, even if I set goals to do more of the things I enjoyed! The thing is, as soon as I made them goals, I stopped enjoying them and looked at them as work. Not good. When you don’t have any goals, you prevent that switch from ever occurring.

Cons:

• Less focus. You will be much more haphazard in accomplishing your goals. Or, rather, you won’t be completing your “goals” at the same level as you would as if you followed Chris Guillebeau’s school. You can still feel focused within the moment, but you won’t have that laser-level of precision you can get when using a formal goal-setting system.
• No feeling of greatness when you complete your goals. When you check items off of a long-term goal list, you feel awesome. You kind of lose that here.
• You can’t see your growth happen over time. You lose the ability to see yourself improve and grow better habits. There’s something to be said about looking at a spreadsheet, detailing every move you made, and saying, “Wow, whatever I was doing in September was awesome because I was really achieving at a high rate back then.” Of course, Jonathan would say that that kind of growth is actually fake growth, not real growth.

Somewhere In-Between

Of course, between the two extremes lies a more moderate approach, which combines elements of both. This is the approach that I take, and I think it works well for me.

Here are my tenets:

• Use to-do lists liberally. I set my MITs (most important things) to do for a day the night before. However, if I do not complete any of those MITs (usually between 4 and 6 of them), I save the to-do list and those things become my first MITs for the next day. That way, the things that I set goals for get done, no matter what, and I don’t feel like a failure if I don’t complete them because there’s always tomorrow. If things start piling up, I just don’t set any goals for a day and just play catch-up.
• Use the Action Method. I use paper versions of the Action Method to keep track of my projects. The sheer fact that I start a project is a sign that I want to do it, and using the Action Method gives me the steps I need to follow in order to complete it. Using the Action Method eliminates arbitrary goals while keeping my “to-dos” actionable every step of the way. I highly recommend it. For more on the Action Method, and some other great ideas, check out the book Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky or check out some of the articles at The 99%.
• Set aside some time for fun. Admittedly, I don’t do this that well, but I’m getting much better at it. In theory, you should set aside at least 30% of your day for fun, hobbies, and activities. This way, you separate time spent working on projects and time having fun. If you want to have a truly enjoyable life, you need to have both.

Where Do You Stand?

So, readers, what’s your perspective on setting goals?

Do you like the disciplined, rock-solid, planned style of the Chris Guillebau School?

Do you like the free-flowing, easy-going, more fun* style of the Jonathan Mead School?

Or are you, like me, somewhere in-between, focusing more on projects than arbitrary goals?

Let me know in the comments!

I think that people misunderstand what it means to be “productive” so much that chasing the holy grail of “productivity” ends up being destructive rather than beneficial. That’s because we, in our over-reliance on measurement and logic as human beings, have decided to deliberately change the meaning of what it means to be “productive”.

What we know as “productivity” is actually faux-productivity. It’s fake productivity. It’s no good. It’s just about useless as a concept. And, yet, when we try and determine how “productive” we are, we almost always resort to using faux-productivity as a way to gauge how efficiently we get our work done.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what in Zeus’s name I’m talking about. So I’ll give you a handy-dandy definition for faux-productivity as a way to soothe your souls.

Faux-productivity is, essentially, how much work or how many things you get done in a certain amount of time. That is, you are more efficient if you get some amount of work done in a shorter amount of time. If you’d like a mathematical model of faux-productivity, it’s this – things done / time. That’s it. Faux-productivity is, basically, the rate at which you cross things off of your to-do list.

Notice that, whenever anyone talks about “productivity”, what they really mean is faux-productivity. They’re just concerned with how fast they get their work done. And that, my friends, is bad news. Why?

Because, of course, it values quantity over quality. You get a bigger Efficiency Ego (EE, for short) if you complete things really really really outrageously fast. Your EE doesn’t care how well you do them – it just cares how rapidly they get done. Your EE just looks at a poor job and says, “Hey, I got that and like 40,000 other things done in 2 minutes, so it doesn’t matter if I made a couple little mistakes,” even if those ‘little mistakes’ involve inputting things drastically wrong on your tax forms, which could result in problems with the authorities. No matter how poorly you do (unless you fail spectacularly), your EE will always look the other way if you do things poorly, as long as you are being very, very “productive”. The faster you are, the better.

Needless to say, that kind of attitude is awful, unless you are doing very repetitive tasks that require zero – and I mean zero – thought or skill to do. In which case, yeah, your productivity is determined by how quickly you do things.

But you’re no assembly-line worker! Most things you do require some skill and effort to do. And working fast all the time just makes you burnt out because you’re not taking the time to enjoy your work.

Real Productivity

Enter real productivity.

The best way I can define it is this: it is doing things with complete focus on the task at hand until completion. The more focused on performing the task that you are during that time, the more “efficient” you are, since your efforts aren’t being broken up by distractions. However – you can’t rush while you’re focusing, as that destroys the quality of your work.

By doing this, you will always complete tasks in the lowest amount of time that it takes to complete it with your best effort and quality. More to the point, you’ll also start enjoying your work more. If you’re always rushing, you’re treating the work in front of you as a means to an end when you can pat yourself on the back for getting things done in a super short period of time. If you focus, you’ll get your work done fast, do it well, and enjoy it!
Let that sink in for a little. By doing things with complete focus until you’re done, you will always, always, always complete that task in the minimum amount of time needed to complete that task at 100% quality. As in, if you’re looking to do your best every time you do something – by maintaining a laser-like, constant focus, you’ll get things done in the shortest possible amount of time, and enjoy it, to boot!

Doesn’t that sound like true productivity to you?

Doesn’t that sound better than rushing all the time?

By doing this, you will give yourself the time you need to complete the task – without rushing. You won’t care about any of the other things on your to-do list – only the one that you’re doing right NOW. By doing so, you’ll do your best – and do so in the fastest way possible.

Worry about quality first, then worry about how many things you get done. It’s much better to make a single masterpiece than a thousand doodles. Both are attempts at art. Which one is better?

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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