Maybe you're one of these people and you're not sure why you don't get things done.

Maybe you deal with these people and they drive you crazy.

Maybe you do get things done but you want to get more things done.

No matter what the situation, it is worth understanding the most common reasons things don't get done.

So ... why don't people get things done?

Not Sure What to Do

One of the main reasons is because they are not sure what to do. They've been assigned a task at work or they want to accomplish a personal goal but they don't do it because they don't know how. People in this group are paralyzed because they either:

• have no idea what to do or where to start
• have so many options and are frozen by the fear of choosing the wrong one.

If you are in this situation, I highly recommend that you stop trying to guess and ask someone, who has already accomplished what you want, how he/she achieved it. If possible, choose someone who has similar values and beliefs to you so you are more likely to resonate with their course of action. Once you have a better picture of how to do what you want to get done, start right away.

No Deadline

If you want to make sure you procrastinate on your next project, don't set a definitive deadline. Just tell yourself you want to accomplish X in the vague future and leave it at that. You'll quickly find that when there is no deadline, it's easy to let other activities or projects, usually the easier ones, skip in line regardless of their importance. Also, you'll find that Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British scholar, was right when he said:

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

- also known as Parkinson's Law

This is why you can get so much done right before you go on vacation. When you set a vacation date, you've given yourself a deadline to finish all the tasks you need to do before you go. If you give yourself a lot of time to complete something, you'll end up taking all that time despite being able to do it faster. Your boss at work knows this and that is why he/she gives you such tight deadlines.

Are you taking advantage of Parkinson's law?

Do you set firm deadlines for your own personal or professional goals?

If not, set one today.

Unclear of What Final Outcome Looks Like

People don't get things done because they don't know what "done" looks like. They keep doing and doing but they don't know when to stop.

For the things you want to get done, what does done look like?

How will you know that  you've accomplished it?

What will you see?

How will you feel?

What sounds will you hear?

Take time to paint a vivid picture of "done"

Not Held Accountable

Getting things done is not easy. It's even harder when you are doing it all by yourself. We have the incredible gift of being able to talk ourselves out of doing difficult and effortful tasks. So what's the difference between the times we actually do the difficult work and the times we talk ourselves out of it?

For me, I find that I do hard, effortful work when someone else is counting on it being done.

People who usually "motivate" me to do hard work are my clients, the readers of my blog, my friends and my family.

I would never wake up on my own to go running at 6 am in the morning but if I know my friend is going to be waiting outside, I get out of bed no matter how cold, dark, wet it is outside.

Who is counting on you?

If you're not getting things done, set up situations where people are counting on you to do what you say. If no one is counting on you, it becomes much easier to wait until tomorrow or when you have more energy. I recommend finding an accountability partner who will check in on you to make sure you are getting things done. The beauty of this setup is that you're counting on each other to make sure you keep this partnership going.

Don't See the Consequences

"You're fired."

That's a clear consequence of not getting things done at work.

How about in your personal life?

What are the consequences if you don't get things done in your personal life?

A divorce?

A heart attack?

A big debt?

These are all serious consequences but for some reason when it comes to our personal lives, we become blind to the consequences until it's too late.

• Not fixing the roof doesn't seem like a big deal until a big storm hits and your ceiling caves in
• Being too lazy to go to the gym for some exercise seem justifiable when it's raining outside until you are 70 pounds overweight and feel horrible about yourself
• Staying at a dead-end job that pays well may seem comfortable at the moment until you get laid off and find that you'll have to take a 50% pay cut because you haven't worked on any useful skills for other employers

No matter what we do or don't do, there are consequences.

Remember this the next time you want to put something off.

If you want to get something done, make sure you:

• know what to do
• have a firm deadline for getting it done
• know exactly what "done" looks, sounds and feels like
• have someone counting on you to get it done
• understand the negative consequences of not getting it done and the positive consequences of getting it done

Good luck!

The post Top 5 Reasons Why People Don’t Get Things Done appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

The main reason is I've been single-tasking, a technique Leo Babauta uses to get a lot of stuff done. This month, I've focused most of my time finalizing my first book and have put my other projects on hold.

Today I received an email from one of my readers asking if everything was ok since I haven't posted any new articles recently. To be honest, I've been so focused that I didn't realize so much time has passed since my last article and it was nice for someone who lives halfway around the world to check in on me (Thanks Stefan). Stefan's email made me wish I had more time in the day to do all the things I wanted to get done and this reminded me of a quote from How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett.

"which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: 'I shall alter that when I have a little more time'? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is."

We are all given 24 hours but why do some people get so much more done than others? What is their secret?

Being able to effectively manage their time 

Here are a few tips I use to make the best use of my time:

Keep a Commitments List

There are times when no matter how hard I try or how fast I work, I don't finish my list of daily tasks. This occurred because I've overbooked myself. The problem, I later realized, was my unwillingness to say no to interesting projects combined with the unsustainable number of interesting projects being brought to my attention. In short, I had trouble saying "no" and it was mainly due to these reasons:

• fearing to miss out on opportunities (FOMO)
• underestimating the time I'll need to devote to each project
• not realizing how many commitments I already had until I said "yes"

My usual solution was to sacrifice sleep but my wife has strongly encouraged me to move away from that. What worked for me to improve this situation was to take inventory of my current commitments and keep an up-to-date list of all my commitments. Just making the list will be very helpful to you but when you couple the list with the rule that no new commitments can be added unless an existing commitment is removed, the effect is powerful. This forces you to evaluate any new commitments that you are tempted to take on and it helps you say "no" to any request on my time that is not worthy of sacrificing an existing commitment. If you're the type of person who finds it hard to say "no", use this method. It's a simple and easy way to keep yourself accountable.

Know Where Your Time Goes

This is the conventional strategy for time management:

Log how you spend your time

and it works. I find it helpful to log your time usage for three weeks including the weekends at 30-minute intervals. It helps to create a paper version that you can carry around or if you have an iPhone, you can use this free app. Once you know where your time goes, categorize how you use your time and calculate how many hours you spend on each category. Categories that I use are:

• Sleep
• Meals
• Productive Work
• Errands,
• Travel/Commute
• Personal Development
• Health/Exercise
• Planning
• Relationships (Social/Friends/Family)
• Wasted Time

I recommend that you create your own categories. You can keep it simple using two categories (Good Time and Wasted Time) or you can make it as detailed as you like (jogging, yoga, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, train, walking, tv, etc.) What's important is being very honest with yourself and how you use your time. Once you know where your time goes, you can usually find chunks of wasted time you can put to good use. This is the fun part: using creative ways to make use of your wasted time. I commute to work and the commute involves both walking and taking the train. I listen to audiobooks when I walk and I read when I'm on the train. This is enough to satisfy my daily personal development commitments and it opens up the time that was formerly reserved for personal development.

Make Room in Your Schedule

If you're reading this article, it's because you have a lot to do and not enough time to do it. I can bet that after the time-logging exercise, you already filled up all the free time you found. You need to be careful about this. Life rarely goes according to plan and you need to plan for that. Always give yourself some buffer time so you can take advantage of what life has to offer. Opportunities may come up that you may want to take on or you may be in flow and want to work longer than you planned for. I encourage you to re-evaluate your list of commitments and your time log to make room for one to two hours of uncommitted time. This is something I've been experimenting with and it has allowed me to introduce greater flexibility in my schedule without any of the guilt that usually comes with not completing my daily tasks.

The post How to Effectively Manage Your Time appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

How can I be more disciplined?

What was the answer?

Was it something vague like “You just have to force yourself to do it”?

Self-discipline is one of those overused words that people have a hard time explaining. It’s filed under the category “easy to recognize but hard to do”.

I’m not going to waste time telling you about the benefits of self-discipline because if you’re reading this, you already have enough reasons of your own. To make sure we’re on the same page, here is my definition of self-discipline:

Self-discipline is the ability to do what you are “supposed to” do despite how you feel about doing it.

What you are “supposed to” do should only be determined by you and no one else. If you let others decide what you are supposed to do, you’re no longer building self-discipline, you’re building obedience.

Most people don’t have problems doing things they feel like doing. The real issue is doing the things they’re supposed to do when they don’t feel like doing it. Examples that come to mind: going to the gym after a long day of work, not eating your favorite dessert because you’re trying to lose weight or waking up early to always be on time.

As you know, doing things we don't feel like doing is tough. It doesn't matter how good it is for us. The good news is we all have self-discipline. Some just have more of it than others. If you floss at least once a month (even year), you have some self-discipline. It's not much but it's a start.

So how can you be more disciplined?

Know Why and Remember It

Do you know why you are supposed to lose weight?

Do you know why eating dessert will not help your diet?

Do you know why you want to be on time?

If you don’t, that’s a good place to start.

When I was working in China, I learned an effective method for finding the root cause of a problem. It’s called the 5 Why’s and the technique is to keep asking why until you drill down to the real cause of the problem.  For our purposes, we’ll be using this technique to get down to the real desire behind your action.

Example:

Your desired action: I want to go to the gym.

Why do you want to go to the gym?

I want to lose weight.

Why do you want to lose weight?

I want to be healthier.

Why do you want to be healthier?

I want to live longer.

Why do you want to live longer?

I want to be in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ok. You get the point.

A key to remember is that you don’t need permission or approval to do what you want. Whatever reason you come up with is legitimate as long as that’s what you really want. Some people might believe that being in the Guinness Book of World Records is a great reason for being healthy and others may think it’s a stupid reason.

No one can tell you if your why is valid. As long as you want it, that’s all that matters.  Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life.

Self-discipline is really about doing what you ultimately want. Many people associate discipline with sacrifice but you're not really sacrificing anything. When you're disciplined, the only thing you sacrifice are things that are not as important to you as the task at hand. The reason we struggle with being disciplined is because we lose sight of what we really want and take action for a lesser want instead.

Example:

You know you should go to the gym but you feel tired after a long day at work and you don’t want to go. You decide to go home instead because at that moment you want to go home and relax. You’ve let that want overshadow your ultimate desire to be in the Guinness book of World Records. It’s not because you think that’s bigger, it’s because you forgot that’s what you really want.

Remember: You’re not going to the gym to work out. You’re going to the gym to fulfill your dream.

The best time to do this: You definitely want to know why before you decide to take action or else you're going to have a tough time sticking with it. If you need discipline to do something in particular right now, ask yourself why at least 5 times? Be clear on what you ultimately want and remember it when lesser wants tempt you.

Create a Temptation-Free Environment

Most people are lazy. I have a theory that the entire productivity movement was developed by lazy people who want to do more work in less time so they can go back to being lazy. If given the choice between two paths that lead to the same outcome, we’ll usually choose what’s convenient.

When my clients find it hard to stay disciplined, I usually find their environment filled with temptations that make it easier to be undisciplined than to be disciplined. Make life easier on yourself by creating an environment that will help you do what you're supposed to do. This will help you tremendously when you don't feel like doing something.

Two Examples:

1. If you're a writer and you want to work on your book, remove all distractions. Prepare all your notes before you start writing so you don’t have to be distracted to do research or to look up anything. Clean up your office so your work space is not cluttered and you won’t have the temptation to clean it up instead of writing your book. Turn off your internet connection, email alerts and phone so no one can interrupt you without your permission.
2. Eating healthy is extremely difficult if you have junk food and soda in your home. If you want to stay disciplined, make it easier to do so by stocking your home and office with only healthy foods and snacks. Use your laziness to your advantage. I’ve never left the house to buy food just because I had a craving. Usually I just grab whatever is in the pantry or in the fridge (I am also lazier than most people so I find this method especially effective). For those wanting to cut down on their meal portions, buy smaller bowls and plates. Set yourself up to win. It works.

The best time to do this: Right at the beginning when you have a lot of motivation and you’re excited about making a change. Most people jump right into doing the activity. I recommend using that energy to create the best environment for staying disciplined. Motivation is fleeting but a well-designed environment can keep you on track for a long time. Make it as easy and convenient as possible to do what you’re supposed to do.

Exercise It Daily

Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. Don’t kick yourself if you feel that you’re not disciplined enough. You may have committed to something that is beyond your current discipline level. What’s great about self-discipline is that it can be developed so what may seem hard now will become easier later.

Find ways every day to exercise your self-discipline. It can be just waking up 5 minutes earlier than you usually do for a week or limiting yourself to 1 soda per week. Whatever you decide, make sure you stick to it no matter what. In the beginning, you may not see any immediate benefits but when being disciplined becomes a habit, you’ll find it is easier and easier to do what you're supposed to do. You'll also find that you’re achieving all the things you want to achieve.

This was certainly the case when I decided to go 3-day/week vegetarian. In the beginning, I was struggling to do 1-day/week but now 3-day/week is easy. When I first started, if it was my vegetarian day, I would choose the vegetarian option no matter how bad it was. This was important because I got into the habit of sticking to my rules no matter how dumb the decision may seem. I’m all for being flexible but if you are looking to build self-discipline, it’s better to make no exceptions. (Side Note: The vegetarian options at many restaurants are pretty bad. It’s usually their regular dish minus the meat for the same price. If you plan to go vegetarian, make sure you map out a few vegetarian friendly restaurants.)

The best time to do this: Every day. It doesn’t matter how big or small the action. Find ways to exercise your self-discipline by committing to something and sticking with it. As you build your self-discipline, remember to increase the difficulty. Make bigger commitments and stick to them. If you find that you’re consistently failing to stay disciplined, reduce the commitment. You always want to be just outside your comfort zone.

"Self-discipline is an act of cultivation. It require you to connect today's actions to tomorrow's results. There's a season for sowing a season for reaping. Self-discipline helps you know which is which."  

– Gary Ryan Blair

Self-discipline boils down to empowering yourself and taking control of your life. It’s really about committing to what you want. Don’t fall into the trap of justifying yourself or making excuses when you slip up. Take responsibility and get right back on track.

In the words of Plato, "The first and best victory is to conquer self."

Do you do what you're supposed to do even when you don't feel like it?

What are some ways you use to stay disciplined?

The post How to Be More Disciplined appeared first on Embrace Possibility.