Merlin Mann - Scared Shitless (Webstock 2011)

Okay, so this is gonna be a bit longer, but bear with me, because I think reading this might help you. I've been exactly where you've been. AND I did almost all the things that people here suggest. Thought I had ADHD and took Ritalin. Thought I had a depression and took Prozac (both of which I definitely cannot recommend, as they screwed badly with my short term memory). I've tried gazillions of plugins, "hacks", to-do lists and the like, only to see that if you're smart (I assume you are because you're posting here), your subconcious is only smarter. If there's one universal truth I got out of these, it's: You can't shit yourself. I've personally read Getting Things Done, The Now Habit, Eat That Frog and consumed lots more of self-help from some of the distinguished authors there are, including Tony Robbins, David Allen, Steven Covey, Brian Tracy, Keith Ferrazzi, Leo Babauta etc. (just to name a few). I can honestly say that all of those books gave me something, some pushed me over the edge for a week, but then I slipped back into procrastination and self-pity. So here's the deal: For some of us, it's just much harder to stay focused on our goals and dreams. All that can and will change, but only with the right leverage, and your missing piece of the puzzle might be a different one that someone else needs. Anyway, I'll be listing the things from all those excellent books above that helped me most (repeating some of the excellent suggestions here), and finishing with my personal missing piece, that I only received a few weeks ago. So what helps? - Get rid of your TV if you have it. Completely. That's really just a senseless time-sucker and you won't miss it within a week. - Babysteps, babysteps, babysteps. Taken from today's Hacker News: "I can not emphasize how important baby steps are. They are the key to avoiding fatal frustration. I have a law that helps define the size of subtasks: DO NOT EVER LEAVE THE COMPUTER IF YOUR PROGRAM DOES NOT RUN." link - Fighting your urge to "procrastinate" all day long leads to lots of decision fatigue that will make everything just worse: link . The best way around this is to create habits, as they will get you on autopilot through difficult procrastination situations within a month. Some great thoughts on this from Leo Babauta: link My personal take on this: The key is starting out VERY slow (one habit a month at the most) and keeping your expectations really low. The habit itself needs to survive through all times and is more important than the actual outcome. Example from me: I do exercises right before showering, but the least I do is 5 pushups. That sounds like nothing, and actually it isn't but I do them no matter what - drunk, late, sad, happy. Habits will eventually carry you through everything, but you just stick to them. Suggestions for you: Not reading e-mail after or before a certain time, turning of the computer completely at a certain time. Stuff like that. - Building on that, affirmations and meditation are extremely powerful as a habit too. I've written an article on this if you're interested: link - Gym and sports definitely helps your willpower, as long as you don't discover another way of procrastination in there. It can happen ;-) - Knowing what you really want. Maybe you know already (I certainly did), but you're too scared and unfocused to really take action. If you're too scared, watch this: ▶ this video If you're too unfocused, read this: link Anyway, know what you wanna do and where you're going. - All these things helped me in a way, but the final piece for me comes here as promised. I've had a huge fight with my wife for all kinds of reasons related to my procrastination, and she told me someth

I think you see this for the same reason you see people endlessly debating/discussing version control systems, GTD, IDEs, OSes, keyboards, mice, browsers, etc. etc. etc. They're all just tools, and yet we (myself included) spend far too much time talking about them, and not nearly enough time using them. True, some of the discussion is merited and is rooted in useful thought about real differences between tools, but much of it is over analyzing. I think much of this could actually be rooted in fear, which drives procrastination in lots of people - more than most of us realize, I think. Merlin Mann's gave a great talk on fear: ▶ this video The key is to understand that fear isn't going to go away completely, and to still keep doing, even though you're scared. Enough talk. I'm going to go build something now.