It's nice to have it confirmed

It's nice to have it confirmed:

"We're all innately creative...90% of inventing is putting in the hours and trying. You don't need to make a big leap, you need to take a thousand small steps"
James Jorasch

What small steps have you taken towards your goals today?

What do you mean you didn't have time????

This is why I love the challenge - all it asks is that just for today (and for the next 100 days) you complete small, but important steps towards what YOU say is important.

That's it.

And that is one of the keys to overcoming the procrastination habit. Why we are motivated to procrastinate is interesting of course. We may figure that we don't have huge chunks of time to work on our goals today - so we'll wait until  we can clear our schedules. Or it may be that we are not convinced what we say we want IS what we really want after all. Well, if it WAS important to you, then surely you would do something about it - wouldn't you?

Some suggestions on overcoming the procrastination habit - because we can make major inroads towards achieving our goals if we:

Don't think too far ahead.

• We may have a desire to have 5,000 followers on our business page - but you can't get those overnight - so break it down - I will aim to get 50 new followers every week ... momentum then says I will reach my target.
• Or how about our desire to lose weight - I know I can't lose 23 kilos in a week or two - but I can over the course of about 20 weeks reach that goal.
• How about the classic "I want a million dollars in my savings account" - we may think that by saving the money we would have spent on a cup of coffee every day wouldn't amount to much - but do the math and it will range in the several hundred dollars in a year. Put that into a savings account, add in the money you saved from not buying lunches, cancelling your magazine subscription / cable channels you don't watch - add in compound interest over time and you will reach your million dollars. Yes it will take time, but it can be done.

Work for just 5 minutes on your project if you really don't want to start something. 5 minutes - you can do something / anything for 5 minutes.

• It's amazing how many squats / situps / stairs you can climb in 5 minutes if you don't have time for a 30 minute work out today.
• How many pages of that book can you read in 5 minutes?
• How much can you write in 5 minutes (answer - about half a page - you can write half a page can't you?)

Don't turn on the internet / email / social networks if you are struggling with the interruptions, especially if they are deliberate ones on your part. Get rid of the temptation - it's easier than you think to break that habit.

Give yourself a deadline, if there isn't one - if you really think you work better under pressure, then create deadlines. OK I have 40 minutes to create the draft outline of the report. Then I can get some feedback ... then i will block out each heading with bullet points of what I want to cover. Then I will be able to ...

• Aim for a little progress rather than none at all, None at all and you will "beat" yourself up.
• Little and often is better than trying to find big chunks of time.
• We can all spare 5 or 10 minutes to go for those things that matter to us.

And talking of the challenge... the new one starts shortly - who's in?

Elle

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