Take Back Control of Your Time

To solve your problem, the first thing you must do is to change your mind.

The reality is, most people are procrastinators and time wasters. And most people are trying to fix this problem… and they’re failing.

So if we want to solve this problem, we definitely can’t be doing what most people do.

There are 4 core ideas that will help you break free from the wrong ways of thinking that most people are stuck in and develop a completely new relationship with how you think of and make use of your time:

1) Internal & External Causes

Some time wasting and procrastination behaviors have external causes. Such as: a distracting environment, a lack of a good productivity system, an overly complex system etc.

Other problems have internal causes. Such as: fear of failure, habits of mind that are working against you, etc.

A common source of failure for many people is that they don’t make this distinction between internal and external causes and try to apply the wrong solutions to a problem. If you try to solve an internal problem with external solutions, you’ve already lost.

2) “More of the Same” Doesn’t Work

Here’s what most people do: they’re frustrated about how much time they’re wasting and how little progress they are making in life, despite how hard they try.

So they tell themselves “I’ll try harder” and maybe install a new productivity app or something.

Then, that doesn’t make a difference and they tell themselves: “I’ll try even harder!”

Guess what: when something doesn’t work, doing more of it won’t work better.

A lot of productivity, motivation and success advice you find online really boils down to this: “do more of what isn’t working for you!”

To achieve real change, forget all that and look for a new approach. Abandon what doesn’t work and do something else entirely.

3) Athletic Productivity

So, what does “something else entirely” look like?

The basic idea behind what you will be creating during this program is a mindset of “athletic productivity”. To become a finely tuned, high performing athlete when it comes to using your time. You’ll learn how to be deliberate, effective and work in short, concentrated bursts. Instead of being permanently, mildly stressed, like most people are nowadays.

4) If You Want to Change Your Life…

Most people want to live a better life. They want to have better outcomes than they’ve gotten so far. But then, they aren’t really willing to leave their comfort zone. They don’t want to do things that are new, unfamiliar, uncomfortable.

If you want to change your life, you have to change your life.

It seems almost too obvious, doesn’t it? But this is where lots of people get stuck. You have to let go of some old ideas, old behaviors. You have to become a (slightly) different kind of person than you are now, if you want to get better results than you are getting now.

Writing Exercise:

Your first task is to do the writing exercise described in the video. You can use pen and paper or any note taking app you like using. Answer the following prompts in writing and take as much time as you need to fully express your thoughts on each one.

This will help you start to shift your mindset.

• What are currently your biggest obstacles to productivity? What are your biggest, most common time wasters?
• When you have something important to do, what does your process typically look like? Describe it in detail, warts and all.
• Take a moment to acknowledge that the above is your current “recipe” for how you use time and approach work. Not to judge yourself, but just to acknowledge that this is your starting point and that it’s not working for you.
• Forgive yourself. Let go of self judgement and resentment you have towards yourself for your tendency to waste time. If you feel emotions come up during this, explore those emotions through writing.