procrastination Tag

Posts tagged 'procrastination'

Home Alone: How Not to Have a Boring Time

Recently, I had the opportunity to experience being by myself for a whole month. My son and my husband went to Africa for a drumming camp and I stayed home with my youngest daughter. She is 17 years old, independent and enjoying her time off between finishing high school and starting acting school, so I was mostly by myself, but I did not have a boring moment.

The last time Gal was away was over 12 years ago, when he went to be with his mother on her last hours and I stayed home with 3 kids. My youngest was 5 years old and I was not by myself at all.

Surprisingly, most of the people who knew Gal was away asked me how I managed being by myself. I didn’t really understand the question.

They asked me if it wasn’t boring to be on my own.

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The 10,000-hour Rule and Becoming a Facebook Expert

When my son had some friends over for lunch one day, we had a talk about what they did in their spare time. This question always interested me, because my son, Tsoof, never had any spare time in high school. In the last year of high school, he started at 7am and finished around 5pm most days of the week. Since he was in bed by 8:30-9:00pm, there was not much time left for other things.

I was very surprised when some of them told me they spent 3-4 hours during weekdays on Facebook, and on the weekend, they even got to 6-8 hours.

I was shocked!

It made me realize why Tsoof was in a different state to them. Back then, he had no Facebook account, he was a student leader, he was taking a university course, he had 8 before-school and after-school activities every week and he was an excellent student.

I told them that if they understood the 10,000-hour rule, they would see that they were gearing up to be experts in … Facebook.

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How to Get Rid of Procrastination

Procrastination is a big problem for anyone who would like to achieve anything. Although from the outside it looks like it is not a problem to do nothing at all, it is not a state of doing nothing from the inside. Inside, there is a fear that right now, doing nothing seems better than anything we can think of doing.

It is important not to confuse a state of bliss and contentment with procrastination. Bliss is doing nothing and enjoying it. Procrastination is doing nothing from fear of the outcome of anything we do.

Procrastination and anxiety are twins and anxiety is the elder. Anxiety is a fear of some imaginary bad future and procrastination is our coping mechanism with anxiety (not a very effective strategy, but a very common one).

When we use it too often, we reach the “whatever” stage, when we “pretend” we do not care what the outcome will be. We always care! Unless you are a Buddhist in your heart and soul (which is a good aspiration), you care about the outcome. You can say you do not care, but you cannot cheat your own subconscious mind into believing you are the Dalai Lama and will be happy with whatever happens.

When our mind thinks we are in danger (because of something someone said or because of what someone might say), it has three choices: fight, flight or freeze. Procrastination is equivalent to the “flight” response – running away at the sight of danger.

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The Stress Pill: 30 More Stressors

In the previous chapter of The Stress Pill, I described some ways people make themselves stressed. I call them “stress pills”. Others call them Stressors.

Here are another 30 tips on how to increase your daily dosage of stress. Of course, if you can avoid them, your stress level will go down and your happiness will go up.

This post is part 3 of 4 in the series The Stress Pill

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What to Stop Doing if You Want to Be Happy

Happiness is a journey and a choice. Happiness has been one of my biggest goals for many years. In the most recent years, I have been writing about happiness in this blog and in my books. The topics of my posts may be different but the focus is always on one thing – being happy.

To reach happiness, we need to focus on what we can do to make our life happy, rather than what we need to stop doing in order to avoid being miserable. Aiming forward, towards a better life, is a better journey than running away. Focusing on the good has been my motto for years. I teach my clients to avoid pink elephants, stop talking about the past, about what not to do, and move forward.

In recent years, I realized that there is a group of people that are not able to move forward because there is no space in their minds for good and happiness. They are so consumed by attitudes and behaviors they have formed as habits that they cannot even make that first step. For these people, the first step towards happiness is often stopping the things that make them unhappy. The things that keep them stuck, in the junction of life, miserable and sad, frustrated and angry, feeling like a failure. I want to go over all the things they must stop doing, before they can start moving forward.

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Best Time Management Quotes

Mastering time management is an art. The good thing about it is that everyone, even those who are not very creativity, can master it.

I was not born an artist of time management. Life circumstances “forced” me to develop these skills. I have to admit though, that it brought me a lot of certainty and even success.

Since I am a fan of quotes, I have been collecting ones about time management. They have helped me over the years to develop an appreciation for time and to make a good use of it.

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Efficient To Do Lists

Making a “to do” list is a very effective way to gain more time, clarity and success in life. People who work from a list are better at managing their time and their lives. Making a list is similar to having a plan, which is always more effective than doing things randomly. Random action tends to be reactive, much like a fire brigade, rushing to put out a fire after hearing the fire alarm. Often times we know what we need to do but our emotions are so overwhelming they prevent us from doing it. This is why we procrastinate. We procrastinate because doing something seems more scary than not doing anything at all. However, procrastination has its own price. We feel guilty and have even more emotional blocks. If for some reason it was hard to do something before, after procrastinating for a while, it is even harder.

The easiest way to stop procrastinating is to do something (even something small) and to move forward. Every small move we make is proof that we are able to keep progressing. It increases our sense of control over life and motivates us to keep going. If we set goals and plan to take action, prioritize our tasks and execute them, we can gain a sense of control, confidence and motivation.

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