How To Stop Doing What You Have Always Done

“The secret to breaking a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit that lines up with your goals.”

You may be familiar with the following quote: “If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.” I disagree with this statement. I believe that if you continue to do the same things, you will end up with less than what you originally had. 

For example, if your customers look for businesses using the Internet and you continue to run ads in the yellow pages, you will have fewer customers as a result of doing what you have always done. Or, if instead of making those cold calls, you continued the habit of randomly surfing the Internet, you would end up with less money in the bank. 

This is why successful people have systems in place to track what they are doing and how they spend their time. I define a bad habit as anything that you do repeatedly that does not support your goals. Time that is spent on such activities is wasted time. You are where you are today based on your daily habits. Where you end up five years from now will be determined by your habits. 

As you read on, you will discover how to use a simple tool to keep you trending towards your goals.

The Twiggs Time Tracker will allow you to track how you are spending your time each day. Here is how it works. First, use a document like the one above to account for each hour of your day. At the end of each hour, take a few minutes to reflect on how you spent your time. If you spent the hour wisely, there is no need to write anything. 

If you feel that you wasted time, write the specific time wasting activity next to the hour. For example, if at 11:00 am you wasted time surfing the Internet, you would write "Surfing the Internet" next to 11:00 am. By doing this, you will start to notice patterns. 

At the end of the week review each of the activities that you wrote down. Your awareness of how you spend your time will increase and so will your productivity. You can create this tracking document with pen and paper or you can e-mail me and I can send you an electronic copy. 

Sincerely,
Eric M. Twiggs
Your Procrastination Prevention Partner

PS. For additional information on making the most of your time, download my latest ebook, One Moment in Time. 

One Step to Stop Procrastination

“Great people are inspired by the hope of success instead of a fear of failure.”

Why do you procrastinate? The root cause for most people is fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of the unknown are the most common root causes of delay. I once had a client who demonstrated these fears whenever we would speak. 

I would suggest that she hire on additional staff to support her growing business, and she would remind me of state of the economy. I would encourage her to attend an out-of-town business convention, and she would mention the risk of airplane travel. I told her to raise her prices, and she told me how her customers were impacted by the unemployment rate. 

Her fear was causing her to procrastinate. Where was this fear coming from? 

If you implement the following step, you can overcome the fears that lead to procrastination. 

Stop Watching the News 
My client began each day by watching the morning news. She got a steady diet of everything that is wrong with the world. Imagine if every morning you participated on a one hour conference call on the topics of bankruptcy, unemployment, poverty and foreclosures. How would that impact your mood? 

Watching the morning news is the equivalent of participating on a bad news conference call every day. 

Negativity and controversy is what sells, so the news media has a motivation to present this to you. Negativity is what moves the needle. For example, I have a speaker friend who hosted a morning radio show. His topics were very inspiring an uplifting. He would ask his listeners to call in, but received very few calls. 

One particular day he tried an experiment. He changed his format by discussing very edgy and controversial topics. He deliberately adopted a negative focus. His phone lines lit up like never before. His program was flooded with phone calls. 

There is a strong demand for negative information, so the media outlets stay in business by delivering bad news. 

Change Your Diet
It’s a proven fact that a change in direction requires a change in diet. If you are moving in the direction of physical health, maintaining the same junk food diet you always had would be counter productive. 

The same holds true for your mental diet. As you move in the direction of your goals, a consistent menu of fear and failure will cause you to procrastinate. 

I believe that the best way to break a bad habit is to replace it with a better one. During the time that you would normally watch the news, watch an inspirational program or video instead. Read a book or listen to an audio program that inspires you. 

I invite you to take the following Twiggs Challenge: For the next 30 days, commit to the habit of NOT watching the news. At the end of the 30-day period, feel free to email me at eric@ericmtwiggs.com to update me on how you feel. 

Sincerely,
Eric M. Twiggs
Your Procrastination Prevention Partner
www.ericmtwiggs.com 

Your 2-Minute Offense

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

- Cyril Parkinson

I am a fan of the National Football League. For me, the most intriguing aspect of the game is the 2-minute offense. When time is running out and a team is losing, they implement this” hurry up” offense in an attempt to catch up. There was one game in particular that comes to mind as a good example of this strategy. 

The Washington Redskins were playing the New Orleans Saints. Through the first three quarters, the Redskins were winning every phase of the game. The Saints struggled to move the ball and score points. 

Suddenly, in the 4th quarter with about eight minutes left, the Saints implemented the 2-minute offense. They scored more points in the last eight minutes than they did in the other three quarters combined! Why didn’t the Saints just run this offense the entire game? 

This reminds me of some of the executives that I have worked with that get more done the week before they go on vacation than they did in the previous three weeks of the month. Or the clerks at the local retail store that are able to check out more customers in the last 30 minutes before closing than they did the previous three hours. 

Or the college student that is able to get more accomplished on his term paper the week it's due than he did the entire semester. These three examples each have one thing in common -- improved productivity resulting from an urgent deadline. Is it possible to have the same level of focus on a project or task without the existence of a pending deadline? 

Important But NOT Urgent
The first key to maintaining the right level of focus on an important project is to begin BEFORE it becomes urgent. Author Stephen Covey breaks down time management into four quadrants:

1. Important and urgent
2. Important but not urgent
3. Not important and urgent
4. Not important and not urgent

If the college student started the term paper at the beginning of the semester, it would be a Quadrant 2 activity because it is important, but not due until the end of the term. Waiting until the last minute makes it a Quadrant 1 activity. Resolve to identify and complete your important projects before they become urgent. 

Time Block
Once you have identified the important project, the next step is to create the urgency. This can be done by scheduling specific blocks of time for completion. Using a timer to give yourself a deadline. For example, when I write my blog, I set my timer for 30 minutes. When the alarm buzzes, I have to stop whether I am finished or not. Having a deadline forces me to make the best use of the time that I have. I eliminate all outside distractions and only focus on the task at hand. Writing my blog is important, and blocking out the time allows me to finish well before it becomes urgent.

Some of the good football teams run the 2-minute offense early in the game when they are ahead on the scoreboard. If you commit to identifying your Quadrant 2 activities, and blocking out time for completion, you will have successfully implemented your own 2-minute offense! 

Sincerely,
Eric M Twiggs
Your Procrastination Prevention Partner
 

Three Words That Will Destroy Your Day

You are having a productive day and plowing through your to-do list.  You’ve blocked off time to start a special project and are on pace to finish well ahead of schedule.   Suddenly, you are confronted with those three little words that can destroy your day: “Got a minute?” 

Most offices have the person that I describe as ”Got a Minute Gary”.  This is the individual that is always approaching you when you’re in the middle of completing an important project and asking, “Hey Eric, you got a minute?” I’ve discovered that they never take only a minute. On a good day, they waste at least 20 minutes of your time. Gary’s sole mission in life is to make you late. 

As you keep reading, you will learn two strategies to effectively deal with “Got a Minute Gary”. If you happen to be the Gary of your office, I hope this message inspires you to change your ways!

Calculate
It’s important to know the value of your time. Knowing this will motivate you to protect it against unscheduled interruptions.   The calculation is simple.  Take your desired annual income and divide by the number of weeks you work factoring in scheduled vacations.   So if your desired income is $110,000 and you work 49 weeks (factoring in 3 vacation weeks), divide dollars weeks and you get $2,244.89.  Next, take the $2,244.89 and divide by the hours you work per week.  Be sure to subtract lunch time.  If you work 50 hours per week and take an hour for lunch each day, you would divide by 45 hours and get $50. In this calculation, your time is worth $50 per hour. 

For many of the people that I work with, their time is worth $100 per hour and up. If you fall into this category and Gary takes up a half an hour of your time, he is literally costing you $50 each time he interrupts you. Every time he shows up at your desk, picture yourself giving him a $50 dollar bill. 

Communicate
When working on a project, let everyone know up front the times of day that you will not be available. This can be accomplished by putting a sign out notification on your email that lets people know the specific blocks of time that you will be out of the loop. Whenever someone emails you they will see the message. 

My favorite approach is the direct one.   When Gary asks you if you have a minute, tell him what you are working on, and offer to schedule an appointment time with him to discuss what he wants to talk about.  Have your calendar ready BEFORE he approaches you. 

You tell him what times work best for you instead of asking him when he is available.  Make sure you communicate when the meeting will start AND when it will end.   Short time windows inspire people to get to the point. 

The appointment will send the message that your time is too valuable to be wasted and will make Gary think twice before interrupting you again.   By calculating the value of your time and communicating your availability, you can avoid those three deadly words for good! 

Sincerely,
Eric M. Twiggs
Your Procrastination Prevention Partner

To access additional time management strategies download my latest ebook, One Moment in Time.

How To Use Motivation To End Your Procrastination

Early in my career, I had a serious problem. I was the new manager of a local tire store and the most important factor for customers when purchasing tires was speed of service. Unfortunately, I had the slowest team of tire technicians in the market. 

I spent most of my days getting yelled at by customers because of the time it took to put tires on their cars. Then one day I noticed an interesting trend. Customers that brought their vehicles to the shop just before we closed got much faster service than everyone else. 

This was because the techs were motivated to get the cars finished so they could go home for the day. They knew that once they got the task done, there was a prize waiting for them. In other words, they used motivation to end their procrastination.  There are two strategies that will help you to break the procrastination habit as well:

1. Create a personal reward system
What is the prize that is waiting on you, once you complete that task you keep putting off? Implementing a personal reward system will give you an answer to this question. For example, treat yourself to a weekend getaway as a reward for completing that business plan that you've been putting off.

Give yourself a deadline and make sure you use a calendar to put both the date and reward in writing. A day at the spa, a trip to your favorite restaurant, and a date to listen to your favorite musical group are other examples of good rewards for taking action. 

At the tire store, I divided the technicians into teams and rewarded the group with the fastest service times with a gift card to their favorite hunting store. I knew that they were avid hunters and that this would motivate them on a personal level. 

2. Create a procrastination penalty system
Procrastination is a silent dream killer because you don’t feel an immediate consequence for your delay. Think about it, when you put off writing that book, there is no game show buzzer that goes off to signal that you are wrong. You get lulled into thinking that everything is fine. 

Therefore, you should create a penalty system that will hold you accountable for following through on your goals. One of the best penalties that I know of is public embarrassment. The key is to find a group of like minded individuals with similar aspirations with whom you can communicate about your goals.

The potential shame of having to tell your group members that you missed the mark will motivate you to take action. Joining a mastermind or networking group can help you accomplish this. Also, stickK gives you the opportunity to publicly post your goals and provides additional ideas for procrastination penalties. 

Back at the shop, I posted each team's productivity results on a dry erase board. The team that did not produce faced public embarrassment and peer pressure from the other techs. Both the goals and the results were on display for everyone to see. As a result, our service times dramatically improved and the store delivered some of the best customer satisfaction results in the market.

If you implement a personal reward and procrastination penalty system, you will notice a dramatic improvement in your results. Just like my technicians, you will produce and not procrastinate! 

Sincerely,
Eric M. Twiggs
Your Procrastination Prevention Partner

PS. If you would like additional procrastination prevention strategies, download my ebook, One Moment in Time.