Opposite Advice

#169

You've often heard people say, plan the night before, write out motivational messages, hustle, hustle, hustle, and celebrate even the small wins. Here's some food for thought that does not agree with any of the aforementioned:

 

"Every once in a while, evaluate your sequence, cross over what was done, and add new high leverage activities, that didn’t make sense to be done earlier."

 

1. Stop hyping yourself up before sleep, promising yourself that as soon as you get up, you will rock the day. This not only builds up false expectations, which may lead to demotivation if you procrastinate, but also puts added pressure in case you don't receive adequate sleep. Instead, wake up, and plan from there.  Tackle one thing at a time based on what works in that circumstance.

2. Don’t burn yourself out. In the beginning, people tend to rush into forming new habits, but in the beginning when any behaviour is fresh, your actions towards your goal may be unstable. Allow yourself to fail. Allow yourself to do whatever you can and slowly improve over time. Focus, for the first several weeks, on being consistent and not breaking the chain.

3. Focus on that hour. From the moment you wake up, even though your goal should be to do the best you can for the day, your focus should be in the hour that’s ahead of you. You're more likely to be more better disciplined that way and get things done in a streamlined manner.

4. Don't reward yourself for small completions. Working on your goals shouldn’t be something dreadful, that you have to reward yourself with. Learn to treat the accomplishment of the subtask itself as the motivating factor.

 

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily” — Zig Ziglar