Deadline
I underestimate the power of deadlines and scheduling.
Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to your PERSONAL METRIC (income, learning, fame, etc.) and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace it, leaving you at the end of the day with nothing accomplished.
- How else could dropping off a package at UPS, setting a few appointments, and checking e-mail consume an entire 9–5 day?
Source: Ferriss, Timothy. The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated (pp. 96-97). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.
More Thoughts
- Figure out what are the things that are most important to you. You can’t be changing your mind every week. Do you focus on having a social life + girlfriend (go out on weekends), or do you want to build out an empire (stay in your room all day)?
- Based on these, figure out a schedule and stick to it. It’s about the consistency. It’s a marathon, not a sprint
- Figure out how to stick to this when you don’t feel like it. Remember, burnout happens when you don’t have Momentum. Figure out ways to maintain momentum.
- What about those mornings when you don’t feel like getting up? When your boss is not there to tell you that? I need my own boss. You are your own boss. Every human is naturally lazy. How do you get that willpower?