Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – Mistakes

Tags

Grateful, Mistakes, Perfectionism, Peter Drucker, Procrastination, Productivity, Thankful

People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

Peter Drucker

Do you procrastinate? If so, one of the reasons may be that you are a perfectionist. A perfectionist wants everything to be perfect. They want their work areas to be perfectly set up, their project plans perfectly in place, their final product perfect. Guess what? These are all unattainable. Perfection will never happen–ever.

I used to be a perfectionist. It is a bad way to be. When I realized this, I began to look at how to get things done and not worry about the end result. There will always be something else you can do. There will always be another opportunity to improve. So give yourself a break. Get to work, make your mistakes, fix them, and get the job done.

When I stopped praying to the perfectionism gods, my life got a lot easier. I no longer worry about making mistakes. When I discover I made one, I fix it and move on. If the mistake is something I can avoid in the future, I note it, develop a mechanism to prevent it in the future, and get back to work.

If you are a perfectionist and want to escape the perfectionist-procrastination cycle you might want to check out this article by Web Standards Sherpa. I’ve read it and it’s pretty good. You’ll be amazed how freeing it is to just get to work and deal with the mistakes as they come.

Today, I’m thankful for leaving perfectionism behind.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – The Inner Critic

Tags

Delaying, Fear, Get it done, Imperfection, Inner Critic, Little Steps, Procrastination, Take Action, Waiting

Have you ever woke up in a funk? You know that feeling that today is going to be one of those days? Everything you do is wrong, not good enough, etc. Say hello to your inner critic.

There are many articles and books that discuss procrastination. One of the biggest contributors to procrastination is the inner critic. It’s that small voice inside your head that wants everything to be perfect before you start something. It says, “Whoa. Slow down. You don’t know enough yet. The stars aren’t aligned yet. You’re not good enough. You’ll embarrass yourself.” This was, by far, the largest contributor to my procrastination.

What I’ve found out:

1. It will never be perfect
2. Do the best you can, it is better to do something, than nothing
3. By doing, you get better
4. By doing, you feel accomplished
5. By doing, you learn what not to do
6. You can always repaint, rewrite, or redo

I could go on and on with this list. The key point is that you will never be perfect. Getting something done is better than doing nothing and continuing to drive yourself crazy as you stare at your project day after day and doing nothing on it.

You’ll never be able to ignore your inner critic. You can quiet it down a bit. Just get to work. Even if it is just one little step in your project plan, you’ll feel great checking that off of the list. Over time, when you realize that you are making progress, that little critic will stop acting up. Doing something is better than doing nothing and thinking about it. Get it off your mind by doing something, anything to move your goals and projects forward. It is a great feeling when you can look at your to-do list at the end of the day and realize you’ve done a lot of work. And it all happens because you did the best you could, with what you had.

We can all improve. We can all get better at what we work at. The key is getting started and moving forward regardless of whether the stars are aligned, you know exactly what you want to accomplish, or the finished product is exactly what you wanted. Paintings are a work in progress, books are a work in progress, anything you set out to do that is unknown to you is a work in progress. You can always repaint, rewrite, or redo whatever you start. That’s how all the greats do it. So can you.

So if you are just like I was a few years back and staring at a to-do list, paralyzed by inaction, you can begin moving forward today. Break those scary projects down into even smaller steps. Do it. Check it off the list. It really is that simple. If you make a mistake, who cares? You learned what not to do. Don’t do that again and continue forward.

I hope all of you are having a great day!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – How Are You Using Your Time?

Tags

Achievement, Goals, Meaning, passion, Planning, Procrastination, time, Waste

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” ―Denis Waitley

I love this quote. I remember reading it a few years ago. It was an epiphany for me. It forced me to ask, “What do I do with my time?” My answer at the time was a little embarrassing.

I love video games. I love movies. I love TV shows. I used to waste an unbelievable amount of time on these things. I’d work, I’d come home and flick on the TV or the XBOX and that was my night. When I look back, I realize how much time I wasted on frivolous things.

Entertainment is fine. We all need to relax our minds from time-to-time. When this entertainment takes over your life, it is no longer fine. I used entertainment to escape my responsibilities—the important things in life, like exercise, meditation, writing, reading, and learning. Now, when I am seeking entertainment, I enjoy it. It isn’t a numbing experience. It is not an escape or a means of procrastination.

There’s a good exercise you can do, to see how you are spending your time. Write everything you do in 5-minute increments for 5 working days. You don’t have to be exact. Just capture as much as you can to see where you are putting your time. The results will amaze you when you take your 5 recorded days and look at what you did or didn’t do.

We all have more time than we will admit. When I did this exercise, I discovered that I was wasting my life. I got up, ate, went to work, worked, came home, watched TV, and went back to bed. What a dismal unengaged life right?

What do you want to do with your time? Do you want to exercise? Do you want to read? Do you want to write? Do you want to build and run a business? The possibilities are endless. Choose the things you want to do and get them on your schedule. My first choice was exercise. I wanted to get in shape and feel better. So, I carved out some time in the morning to exercise every day. This is where I started.

Now, that I am retired, I structured my day with a bunch of activities. Reading, writing, learning, exercise, and meditation all take up a part of my day. I also enjoy reading the news, keeping my email in-boxes cleaned out, and interact on a few social networks. These are the things I enjoy doing. All of them contribute to the goals I have set for myself.

What are you going to do with your day? What are your goals? Where do you want to be at the end of the year? In five years? You can do whatever you want to do. It is up to you. Make choices. After you’ve chosen the areas you want to pursue, plan how much time you want to spend on each area of interest. Then get these things on a daily list or calendar.

Go out and find self-help books on planning, goal setting, and time management. Watch some YouTube videos. Take some online courses. You can also ask yourself, “What have I always wanted to do but never had the time to pursue?” If you’ve done the above time-tracking exercise, you realize how much time you really have. Go after this thing you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe you wanted to learn how to garden. Maybe you want to start a coin or stamp collection. Maybe you want to start an exercise routine, take up yoga, or learn to ballroom dance. The possibilities are endless.

Life continues. Time continues. Why continue to follow the same path if you are unhappy with it? You can do whatever you want to. Weigh your options. Explore. Choose. You’ll be glad you did.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Action Plans, Focus, moving forward, Opportunities, Overwhelm, Procrastination, Resistance

Divine Spirit opens new opportunities, but we must take them. We must make our own choices with the best information at hand.—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Opportunities present themselves to us constantly. What do we do with them? Do we grab the opportunity, investigate it, and make a choice to use or not use it or do we let it pass by because we are too busy to take the time and test its value? I think many people do the latter. Why? Perhaps we are exceptionally busy being banged and bumped around by life.

Unlike the person above, another person may grab every opportunity that comes their way and scatter their attention and efforts to the wind. They run down this rabbit hole and then another, accomplishing nothing. This too can be problematic and aid a person’s procrastination. Both routes can lead to missed opportunities and add to a person’s level of confusion.

Again, I ask why? Why would one person be oblivious to opportunity and another be hyper-actively pursuing all these new ideas? Fear. Person #1 is fearful and avoids everything. They are like the cartoon Ostrich that buries its head in the ground. Person #2 is fearful and pursues everything around them, enabling procrastination. They are like a puppy in a brand-new home, running this way and that, smelling and investigating everything that comes their way. If you watch people in these states, you soon see how ineffective it is to follow either path. What’s the solution?

The solution to these problems is focus. Focused people stay on track. They move forward with their goals. They concentrate their efforts on what they must do today to move them one step closer to their goals and avoid getting side-tracked by that next idea that pops up in their head. They track these ideas, however. They write their ideas down. They capture these ideas and process them later.

An idea comes, you capture it, and get back to your work. This way you are capturing all the ideas that come your way and avoiding the scatterbrain effects of moving on everything you receive right now. This is the most efficient way of maintaining a steady flow of ideas and remaining focused on the task at hand.

If you find yourself in either of these states (ignoring your ideas or chasing every idea that comes) take a moment and ask yourself some questions:

Am I working on my goals or am I doing busy work?

Am I missing opportunities or capturing them?

If you are doing too much busy work and avoiding the pursuit of your goals, take time to think about why you are resisting action. Is the next task too big? Are you lacking information? Are you lacking the skill to accomplish the next step in your plan? When we resist something, it is likely because of one of these reasons. Brainstorm. Think about all the things you could do right now to move yourself forward. If you are lacking information or skills, look for some online tutorials, classes, or YouTube videos that could give you some ideas. Once you find the solution, add that to your goal’s action plan, schedule it, and get to work. If the next task on your action plan is too big, break it down into more action steps and continue.

I hope this helps some of you. I find myself in this place from time-to-time. When I recognize that I’m stuck or resisting an action step in my plan, I look at the step and ask the above questions.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thinking Thursday

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, Paralysis by Analysis, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Stephen Guise, Walt Disney, Worry

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Walt Disney

Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walt_disney_100644

As you’ll see below, I’m reading another Stephen Guise book. This one is called How to be an Imperfectionist. It’s a great book and will help you get unstuck, particularly if you are a perfectionist and worried about all the bad things that could happen to you if you start doing this or that before you even start!

I didn’t realize how much of a perfectionist I was until I began reading this book. If nothing else, this book will motivate you to just start something, instead of wasting time worrying about things that may or may not happen in the process. Just get on with it already!

I think this is an important point. How many dreams do you have? What goals would you like to begin but haven’t? How many projects are you still thinking about doing? Just get moving on them. This is easier said than done, I know.

Paralysis by analysis is the best description I can give in this regard. It is overthinking. It is over-worrying, it is planning for doom when you haven’t even started. It’s all those things that cause you to pause before you do anything.

You want to learn to draw—do it! You want to find a companion—get out there! You want to write that book—get on with it! Seriously, folks. Stop thinking about all the problems you’re going to have and just get moving on your projects. This is really liberating.

If this is you—read this book: How to be an imperfectionist, Stephen Guise. It’s the best $5.99 you’ll ever spend. I’m still reading the book but will finish it before the weekend is out. I’ve already begun doing the things I wanted to do without reading his book, but you guessed it—I was one of those folks that would talk about doing this or that and never get off the ground. Now, I am pursuing all of it. Life is so much better when you just get on with what you want to do and stop worrying so much about outcomes. Enjoy the ride!

One of the things I say to myself when I am about to do something that is on the edge of my comfort zone, is: The Adventure Begins. This is something I picked up in the Army. This statement was a psychological trigger that caused me to instantly focus on soldiering and forget about the girlfriend or wife I was leaving, the comforts of home I would be missing out on. This triggered my alter-ego—the soldier who was tough as nails focused on the mission, come hell or high water. The Adventure Begins is a great way to tackle some of your high-stress, high-angst projects. Just get started, folks. You will feel so much better when you do.

You can even read about Walt Disney’s life if you want. Heck, read about Lincoln too. Both men dealt with serious setbacks and accomplished great things. They looked at the situation, put together a plan and did the best they could as they went along. In the end, they went down in history as men who did things no one else could do or wanted to do. They took life as it came and dealt with all the problems and issues facing them.

Were their solutions perfect? No. They were just solutions, wrought with problems, disappointments, and challenges. They moved forward day-by-day and, in the end, accomplished great things. You don’t need to be a Walt Disney or Abraham Lincoln to do the same.

Here’s what I’ve done this week:

Exercise Program:

Jim Stoppani’s Shortcut to Size – (www.bodybuilding.com) – I’ve done this workout before and returning to it because it is just a good all-around weight routine. It’s 8 weeks in length, a 4-day split with 3 rest/cardio days mixed in.

Books:

Armor, Steakley – Recommended by an Army Buddy. Wow! What a terrific book! If you like outer space stuff, you’ll like this book. Great action, lots of twists and turns in the plot, and such a great climax at the end.

Mini-habits for weight loss, Guise – Finished this book in a day. It has some great advice on weight loss, particularly the suggested mini habits to get your program jump-started. If you’d like to leave the Yo-Yo diet world and start something that helps you change for the long-term, this is your book.

How to be an Imperfectionist, Guise – Yep, I’m on a Stephen Guise kick right now. He has written some other books and I’m going to read all of them. All his books are reasonably priced (around $5.99 for the kindle version). If you like mini-habits, his first book, you’ll enjoy the rest. They all read the same but have some different ideas. I’ll write a review once I’m finished.

Classes:

De-mystifying Mindfulness Course – Coursera – One of the largest disadvantages of the Coursera platform is the timing. I like moving through a course at my own pace. I lost interest in this course when I was forced to stop doing anything for it for over a week. I am now concentrating on one of my life goals—to learn how to write code.

Codecademy – I’m currently learning how to use Atom, a text editor that can compile your code. It is free and was developed on Git Hub. I am still working with HTML and CSS, but now am working on projects that have little to no step-by-step hand-holding. This project is a basic website and the code is all my own. I really enjoy this stuff. This is particularly fun because it is really testing my ability to generate code on my own, just like a typical developer would, working with images, a technical spec, and that’s it. This is a real kick!

Documentaries:

Looking for one that interests me.

Movies:

Haven’t found any movies that have intrigued me enough to watch.

Fun:

Ozark – Netflix – Season 2 – Ok, they did a good job with this. I won’t give you any spoilers, other than it is just as good as Season 1. I highly recommend this one. If you haven’t watched Ozark, you’ll want to add this one to your watchlist.

Homecoming (Amazon) – This is a thriller with Julia Roberts. I really enjoyed it and blew through it in a few days. What I liked most was the shortness of the episodes (around 20 minutes or so). There is also a very interesting cinematic effect you’ll see when you watch it. I won’t give it away here. All I can say is this is another series worth the watch.

Interesting Apps:

Toon Blast – Every once in a while, I come across an entertaining game app. This one is a match game of sorts but very entertaining.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Funny Friday

Tags

Don Marquis, Funny, Giggle, Joke, Laugh, Procrastination

Graphic from: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/don_marquis_107414?src=t_funny 

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I’m in Adrian, Michigan for an annual religious retreat. I will try to get something up for my Spiritual Saturday posting but can’t promise anything. We have a busy day scheduled tomorrow and I am running one of the workshops. If I don’t get something up tomorrow, I’ll definitely see you on Monday.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Pablo Picasso – Procrastination

Tags

David Allen, Discomfort, Fear, Getting Things Done, Pablo Picasso, Procrastination, To-do Lists

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso

Well, this quote deals with procrastination.

Why do we procrastinate? There are quite a few reasons. These reasons can all be distilled to two things—Fear and Discomfort.

We fear we’ll screw up. We’ll fear that we aren’t good enough. We’ll fear that we’re wasting time.

Discomfort deals with those tasks we just don’t want to do. We don’t want to clean our home, cook that meal, or go to the gym. They are all uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to do these things. So, we put things off and off and off and we end up adding to a pile of things we haven’t done that we should have.

How do we counter procrastination? By taking action. We do something. Whether it’s writing a page toward your new book, grabbing a vacuum cleaner and do one room in your house, or grabbing that first dirt dish and putting in the dishwasher. Take action, regardless of how small that thing we have to do is.

Once you complete this little action you’ll feel better. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. You’ll feel relief that you did one thing on that long list of to-dos.

Or don’t. It’s your life. You can let the things you need to do pile up and get to a point where you won’t know where to start. You’ll be paralyzed. Your stress levels will increase because things that are not done produce stress, particularly if you know you have to do them at some point.

So, take some time today to brainstorm and write all of the things down you need to do. Some of these things will be daily activities that you’ll have to add to some sort of checklist. Others will be “one and done” tasks. You do them once and they’re done. Others will be more complex and tasks that may take a few months to complete. With these, you’ll have to spend some time breaking that task down into meaningful steps and knock each one out as you go in the order that makes the most sense to you.

One book I read every year is Getting Things Done by David Allen. This is one of the best “how to” books on personal time management there is. I highly recommend it. The book will give you a system of tracking your tasks, executing those tasks, and how to keep moving forward. I highly recommend it.

Well, that’s it for today folks.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Carl Bard, Mistakes, Procrastination

Today’s quote:

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard

Is there really any other place you can start? You can’t start before right now. I think what Carl is alluding to is our ability to recover from mistakes.

Mistakes are a normal occurrence, particularly when we begin something new. I think this is the greatest cause of procrastination there is. We are so afraid of making mistakes that we never get started.

So, what’s the lesson? Adopt an attitude where mistakes are acceptable. Create an environment for yourself where it’s ok to make mistakes. Plan on mistakes and they will no longer hinder your progress.

I hope you are having a great Tuesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Stephen King

Tags

Getting to work, Procrastination, Stephen King

Today’s Quote:

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King

This is a particularly interesting quote when you consider work in the creative fields. From my understanding, King writes his books on the fly. He doesn’t outline or any of that.

Other authors do a lot of outlining before they put the pen to the page. I am sort of a hybrid. I need to have some sort of organization before I begin writing, but I also enjoy the beauty of “discovering” a story versus creating everything in a rigid format like outlining. Obviously, I’m still finding what works and what doesn’t work.

This is good advice. Sometimes you just have to do something, make mistakes, and redo. At least you’ll make some progress while you are plugging away. This is what makes Stephen King such a prolific writer. I read his book on writing and he typically cranks out about 1800 words a day. This is why he can put out so many books in a year.

I hope to be able to do the same thing. The first thing I want to do is establish a process that works for me. This takes a lot of reading to see how other people do things and experimenting with different processes. I’ve learned that writing nonfiction books is much different from writing novels.

After contemplating this quote, it really applies to anything. There are those that overthink what they are going to do and never get out of thinking mode. There are others who dive right in and get to work. I think I would like to approach this with a more balanced approach. Think some then write. Think some and write some more. I think that is what will work for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Eva Young, nice to do tasks, priority tasks, Procrastination

Today’s Quote:

“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” – Eva Young

If you are wondering about the common problems the human race deals with, simply look at the quotes that are out there. This is yet another quote about procrastination. You think humans have a problem with that? I know I do from time to time.

For me, procrastination typically occurs when I am faced with a task I just don’t want to do. Since I’m retired I’m finding more and more that I have the freedom to not do these things—hence no procrastination, well a lot less anyway 😊.

There are lots of articles on overcoming procrastination. If this is a problem you see in yourself, look at what is holding you back from completing something you need to do. Is it because you don’t have all the information you need? Is it because you want the stars to align? Is it because you just don’t want to do the task? If it is the latter, ask yourself “Is this really something I need to do right now?” If it isn’t, pull this from your to-do list and give yourself a break. Put it on a waiting list for later. Who knows? Maybe, later on, you’ll actually want to do this thing. For now, stop beating yourself up over a “nice to do” task and get on with the important ones.

Until next time…

Dave