The 3 Things You Do To Sabotage Success: How To Stop Limiting Yourself!

How Your Beliefs Determine Your Success

It's that time of year!  

The holidays are here and among us like aliens masked as friends. Not the cute E.T. type aliens, more like Alien vs. Predator type, the kind that want to rip your spine out with your skull as a trophy.  

Perhaps that's just how I feel, but I digress from the point...

A New Year means that it's also time for resolutions and grandiose plans for ourselves and our lives.

(Get The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business from Amazon here)

They could be changes in our behaviors, or changes in our jobs, or perhaps an itch to travel that needs to be scratched.

But like a parasitic worm, there's ONE major problem that will destroy even the best resolution.

It's the danger of self-limiting beliefs.

The problem with changing habits or making any substantial changes in our lives is that we are often sabotaging our chance for success without even knowing it.

While we're busy trying to become Superman, we're often wearing a necklace made of Kryptonite.

If you want to make changes in your life, the hardest part isn't getting started or changing negative habits into the ones you desire most.

No, the most challenging aspect of these changes are the ones that can act as the most harmful to whether you succeed or not is: simply your beliefs.

If you believe you'll succeed or not has a large influence over whether you'll effectively make the changes you want.

I'm not talking about faux concepts like "fake it until you make it" or imagine it and it will come to fruition.

But if you do believe that you can do something, all research points to the fact that you should succeed.

The single most influential factor in psychological research about behavioral change is that it is the positive mindset that differentiates between success and failure.

If you doubt you can; you don't have enough training or the right type of schooling, or you don't know how, so you don't even try to get off the couch - whelp - you guessed it!

You have zero chance to succeed.

That's called the power of self-limiting beliefs.

(In the past, we've discussed what is success in a world that judges your outcomes - this is about stopping our tendencies to limit ourselves).

The Power Of Beliefs And The Dangers Of Self-Doubt 

A recent article I stumbled upon got me thinking about the power our confidence and doubts play on our potential for success or failure.

(You can read the article by clicking here)

If you believe in you can accomplish something, you can.

If you doubt you can do it, you can't.

It's the truth of self-limiting beliefs that we can only accomplish what we believe we can.

(Obviously as much as I want to be Superman, it's not going to happen. Unless I'm sent to a galaxy with a red star perhaps)

But in Henry Ford's own vernacular, if you believe you can do something or believe you can't, either way, you're correct.

When we believe we are capable of something, we find mechanisms to overcome any challenges that present themselves along the way.

Get Off The Couch And Get Moving! 

For example, if you just ate waaaay too much this past holiday and feel you want to lose some weight, you probably feel motivated to get started.

You go out and get new running shoes, a new workout outfit, get ready for bed, set the alarm clock to wake up early and when it goes off?  You end up hitting the snooze button, negotiating with yourself that you'll get started in just a little bit, or later in the day, or tomorrow.

Or perhaps you climb out of bed, lace up your shoes, head outside, and begin to run.

You start to breathe heavy; your legs are plodding into the concrete like they're trying to anchor themselves to the ground, and you slow down to a mere walk.

Somehow you've forgotten just how difficult it is to start a workout regime but being reminded by your body loudly just how out of shape you truly are.

You finish your routine and go about your day.  Slowly, you become sore in places you forgot about, stiff in others.

The next morning, you're not as enthusiastic as you were the day before.  You're sore, tired and it takes a little more momentum to begin.  It's harder to lace your shoes, to get outside and start. It becomes easier to quit earlier than the day before and before you know it, you've walked twice the distance from the day before.

The limiting belief is that it's too difficult to lose weight.

So when obstacles appear, you false-start or quit too early.

But if you reexamine the outcome, and your approach is rethought, motivation and follow through are much easier to maintain.

The main problem in the examples above were in the failure to establish more realistic goals with the by-product (outcome) being losing weight.

You can't believe in the outcome solely and have expectations of being successful. You need small, manageable tasks that add up to the desired benefits and goals.

A Quick 3-Step Process To Guarantee Success From The Outset

If the desired outcome is to lose weight, setting more manageable goals while developing a reward system works much more effectively.

Instead of getting motivated to lose weight, try to focus on exercising in a short, limited amount on an every-other-day basis.

In short, the 3 most important things you can do to make lasting change in your life are the result of these conscious acts:

1) Decide On Change: Make a decision on what it is you want to change about your habits.  It isn't until we decide that something needs to change and we are determined to change it that true action and habit development can begin.

2) Create Manageable Tasks: Once you've decided the action you want to take and the desired outcome you want, work backward from that point.  Create a list of small actions and tasks you can make daily.  Small repetitions and accomplishments over time build up to a monumental change.

3) Evaluate Your Beliefs: What you believe goes along way toward success.  Discover what doubts you have; what self-limiting beliefs are you repeating to yourself that are having the negative effect on your changes? It's only through understanding our motivations and mindsets that we can overcome the barriers we create for ourselves.

By making a decisive choice to make a change, creating daily micro-accomplishments toward the end goal and examining what beliefs may be limiting performance is the best routine for you to make lasting, permanent changes in your habits.

Finally, get enough rest.

Often we limit ourselves by stressing our energy resources.  By placing too much stress on our energy stores, we have very little left over for change or resistance as it comes about in our day.  We become creatures of habit, rather than purpose and that is directly correlated with lack of sleep and energy.

There's only so much time in the day and you have only so much energy.

Prioritize your important tasks after you've had a chance to recharge.  Get a proper amount of sleep, setting the alarm for the same time every morning, and take mental breaks throughout the day.  Exercise or meditation are great ways to recharge your brain.

Stick To Your Routine. 

As you start out on making your habits permanent, one of the most important things is to make them routine. Too often we fail by taking a break just when things are becoming more difficult. But if you're serious about the changes you're trying to make, then stick-to-it-ness is critical for success.

A great trick is to post a calendar and mark it for every day you succeed in moderate exercise. (For more tips, you can read my post 5 Tips To Make A Better You)

After the first week, treat yourself to a movie (avoid the popcorn), a show, or some other activity you enjoy.

After a few weeks, if you meet your exercise goals, treat yourself to something you value a little more, say a new pair of shoes or a nice dinner out for example.

The idea is to make your incremental steps more manageable and believable.

And in the process of taking additional steps, we're able to get much further.

If you'd like to make a positive change in your life, your health or habits, get The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg from Amazon by clicking the link.

Truth is, you'll find the paperback, hardcopy or ebook format you want at an incredible price and I'll receive a small commission for helping you find the book.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

What To Do When Your Best Isn't Good Enough

How To Be Successful In A World That Judges Your Outcomes

Get The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People Below!

In a recent post I discussed the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

It got me thinking about what if you try your best but it's not good enough?

Well, it could be a problem of perception.

The Genius of 90%

Have you ever watched a movie that was great up until the ending?

The recent Mad Max comes to mind.

In it, the movie starts at the warlord Immortan Joe's fortress The Citadel, a cruel fortress that Immortan Joe has used to imprison survivors of the apocalypse. To control the survivors, Immortan Joe pumps water from the cliffs of The Citadel with much fanfare.

After his top warrior Imperator Furiosa helps 5 of the warlords'  herom escape, the warlord leads a war party across the wasteland to catch them with stunning cinematography and action.

It's one long car chase across the desert of Australia that thuds at the end.

Why?

For one, warlord Immortan Joe is killed about 80% into the movie.

Two, Mad Max and Furiosa return to the Citadel and the enslaved survivors know that they are now free. The water lines are opened once again to the cheering of the survivors as Mad Max disappears into the crowd.

Roll credits.

It just ends, there's no denouement.  It all ends too quickly and feels like the producer was limited by time, money, plot holes or all of the above. There's nothing that wraps the movie in a tidy way or reveals the futures of these survivors.

Judged by the ending, Mad Max: Fury Road sucks.  So why then is it so popular?

Because 90% of it is entertaining and visually stunning.

The End Justifies The Means - Or Not

So how do you define success then?  Mad Max: Fury Road is an awesome fete of cinema. Even with a quickly wrapped ending that falls flat.

We've all gone through it.  We've worked our tails off to prepare for success at something important only to fail.

You've spent hours developing an idea, going through all the necessary edits and cuts only to find out that in the end, it just wasn't good enough.

Sitting in your room at night spending hours writing a song that you're sure is the best thing you could do.

You wrote it specifically for one person in mind, that special someone.


They'll swoon with your melodies; their dreams are replays of your metaphors in their imagination.



You tell them it's unfinished but that they are the inspiration for it.

In your mind, you imagine how they'll act when you play it for them.

They'll fall in love with you (all over again).

And then you play it for them.

And their reaction is underwhelming.

"Um, that was good," they say.

"Can you play Taylor Swift?  Led Zeppelin?" they ask afterwards.

How do you react?

Are you the type of person that throws your hands up to the sky as if to say "what else can I do?"

Are you the type that allows the disappointment to consume you and paralyze you from ever taking a risk that success requires, from doing that task again?

Are you crestfallen?

Maybe.  Nobody would blame you for feeling that way.

But by spending the time to learn the chords and melodies, as well as memorize the lyrics, you're already a success.

By putting yourself out there, you're already a success.

The process has taught you things that are invaluable to how the song is received.

What if you're on a team, and you dream of winning a game, a championship, and you lose the final game you play.

Is the season a failure in your mind?

All those hours you've spent training and learning from your teammates and coaches.

All the time you've sacrificed for the team when you could have been with friends and family doing other things, is that wasted?

Yes and no.

It's true that the experience is wasted if you judge the outcome of the season as the only metric of success.

And most of the time the pressure felt immediately after the big loss is one of perception.  It's how we imagine our success is perceived by others. Friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, players from other teams - these are who we imagine we're being judged by.

But why do we allow the perception of others to dictate our concepts of success?

Why is it that the people who didn't engage in all the hours of dedication, of learning, sculpting and rehearsing are the ones we shy away from after we fall short of our goals?

Look, we all set goals.  Some we meet and with many we fall short.  Why let other people, especially ones not invested in the process, in the hours of work you dedicated to determine your opinion of your success.

Is it something you're taught?

The Failure Of Your Education

How Your Success Is Pre-Determined By Your Approach To Learning

In school, the emphasis is often on studying for the tests.

Preparing on material that you'll be tested on rather than the comprehension of the material.

Studying and the last-minute cramming of all that material just before an exam is a short-term solution.  It's like a crash diet before a day at the beach.  It may help you fit into a new bathing suit but won't make a major difference in the long run.

We too often focus on the outcomes of what we do and not on how we prepare.  In school we focus on our grade on the exam versus the long term benefits of comprehension.  It's the opinion of others that matters, by way of our grade on the exam, rather than what we've gained in understanding.

While grades are an obviously important metric for reflection, for us to gain insight on how well we grasp the material, it shouldn't be the primary point.

The point of education should be in comprehension.

Instead, it should focus on the understanding of the material.

This is how real gains are made in knowledge, not in the rote memorization of dates and facts, but in the analysis of the information.

And when doing something of value we should have the same goal in mind.

In The Eye Of The Beholder A Rose Is Still A Rose

A painter shouldn't be judged by how well they recreate a lifelike image.

But they should be judged on the nuance of their respective skills.  How well do they mix textures, lighting and shades?  How is their grasp and analysis of the subject?

If we judged painters, writers, musicians and other creatives as we do athletes and students, we'd have a much less beautiful world.

So we shouldn't let others determine that the outcome justifies the means.

How we do something and what we learn along the way is 1000 times more valuable to our well-being than the outcome of one game or how one song is received.

So when you do your best, but it's not good enough, ask yourself how you're evaluating what's "good enough."

Success shouldn't be defined by other peoples judgments of your outcomes.  If you do your best and you fall short, it's still a success.

Trust yourself and trust your process.

If you'd like to get a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, click the picture below and get your copy from Amazon today.

5 Common Sense Ways To Improve Your Health And Increase Your Productivity That You Can Start Today

5 Simple Things You Can Do To Improve Your Life Today

There are countless things you can do to improve your life.  From getting more sleep, to eating better, to changing jobs and lowering debt.

Improving your life will make you happier, healthier and more productive.

If those are things that interest you, keep reading.

5 Common Sense Things You Can Do To Improve Your Well Being Today

1) Get More Sleep:

According to the National Institute of Health, the average American adult gets less than 7 hours of sleep a night.  The cause for this is numerous, from an imbalance of work/life to heavy meals at dinner time, caffeine after 4 pm, family demands, but for most it's simply entertainment, television and social media.

The recommended daily amount for a fully grown adult is in the window of 7-9 hours per night for optimal rest and recovery.

Some of the major benefits of sleeping properly are:

• Improved Memory
• Sharpened Attention and Focus
• Improved Overall Health and Wellbeing
• Increase Creativity and Productivity
• Fight Infection and Inflammation
• Lower Stress Levels

CLICK HERE FOR NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION SLEEP RECOMMENDATIONS

So ask yourself, how important is that next episode of The Bachelorette or South Park?


2) Exercise Daily:

Along with sleeping more, there's a correlation with exercise and improved health. That's a no-brainer.  But exercise, any exercise can help reduce overall stress levels as well as burn off excess calories.  A bonus is that daily exercise helps regulate a normal sleep pattern.

It doesn't have to be a major undertaking.  It's better to do some form of interval or variable training in the beginning.  In other words, start slowly and build your endurance and strength over time. For example, run for a couple minutes, and then intersperse that with a long walk, then another short run, and repeat.

3) Eat Healthier and Drink More Water:

Our bodies are made of over 70% water, so replenishing our most important element is also a no-brainer.  But with our busy, go-go culture we're constantly consuming more calories than necessary.

The positive effects of water can help in the body's ability to regenerate and heal itself; adds in sleep balance; decreases stress levels; can aid in digestion and caloric intake, as well as make you look and feel younger.

From processed foods with added salt, additives and preservatives to sugary drinks like sodas and caffeine or other stimulants, we are constantly depleting our water reserves.

The recommended daily dose is 8 glasses of 8 oz. of water a day.  That works out to a half gallon of water per day for the average adult, but should possibly be increased depending on your diet and activity levels.


4) Organize Your Tasks:



Knowing what tasks are important and the order in which they should be undertaken is one of the most efficient tactics we can undertake.  For example, if you have a deadline for two different projects, knowing which one to start with and which one to finish can be of utmost importance.

In The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, Forbes magazine points out that one of the key takeaways is to think things through, focus on doing the right things first in the proper order then focus on less important tasks.  

Read More About The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People By Getting The Book From Amazon. 


5) Take Time To Relax:

If you were to go run like Forrest Gump in the iconic image from the movie, you'd die of exhaustion before you ever got where it was you were trying to go.  Even if as Forrest said, "...so I went running," you would still need a time period to recover.

We know we can't workout for ever, that much is obvious.  We know we need to rest and recuperate.  So why do we refuse to take some time for ourselves to just relax and let our thoughts come to us as they will?

Taking time to relax in most societies outside the U.S. is actually mandated by terms of employment. Where as most employers offer 2 weeks or less of paid vacation, check out some of the leaders in time off:

• Australia offers 28 days of paid vacation per average
• Belgians typically have 30 days paid vacation
• Italy and France typically offer 31 days of paid time off
• Spain, Portugal and Germany offer 34-35 days of paid vacation time

Time off will help you recharge, recuperate and reenergize your self, your body and your mind.

My Kindle Publishing Journey Updates

 Announcing Another Short Story 

It's Not The Things We Say

When I started my Kindle Publishing journey, I released a short story titled The Ballad of John Walker: A Short Story and there was a decent amount of steam behind it.

Many of you picked it up, some even left reviews!

And amazon reviews are the gold standard for Amazon.  It acts as social proof and validation, and Amazon's algorithm rewards items and books with higher number of reviews.

Click Here To Write A Review

I discussed all the nuances, lessons learned and strategic decisions I made on a post earlier titled "The 3 Things I Learned Releasing 3 Stories In 3 Months." You can read it by clicking on the title above.

After I released The Ballad of John Walker: A Short Story, I quietly published a collection of 3 short stories under the title Mayonnaise and Other Stories: A Mostly Made-Up Account Of Life In The World Today.

Priced at $1.99 for 3 stories, the downloads have been alright but not as good as The Ballad of John Walker.  Reviews are less for Mayonnaise than for Ballad, but hopefully that will right itself in time.

Announcing A New Title - It's Not The Things We Say

What happens when you reach a point in a relationship when you just don't know how to talk to each other?

Tack on a tragedy and how do you overcome that schism?

That's the question I examined in the short story It's Not The Things We Say.



 It's on Amazon's Kindle Publishing platform and you can download it for $0.99 right now by clicking THIS LINK.

5 Tips To Make A Change For A Better You

Small Behavioral Changes That Will Help You Become A Better You

This post is about behavioral modification and habit forming.

We need to define habits and behavioral modification as making subtle changes in our unconscious actions (habits) and learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior (new habits).

So, how does this apply to you and my writing and Kindle Publishing journey?

It's about ways to overcome challenges that seem too grandiose and too large to otherwise accomplish.

It's about making major changes in how we create and reinforce actions, good and bad, and how we can make small changes for major accomplishments.

It's about learning new tactics, taking shorter decisive actions to achieve greater mastery and improved productivity.

As I've written previously, practice makes permanent.

The trick is about taking small detailed steps that you can build upon.

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

In a popular, well known book by Jim Collins called "Good To Great," he writes a story about two groups of people that are attempting the overcome the same challenge in two distinctly different ways.

What both groups were were attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole during a time when luxury was low and the risk was great.


Get It From Amazon - Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

One group led by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott would "batch" their efforts.  They would hike as far as they could and for as long as they could maintain it, weather permitting.  Trudging upward of 40+ miles a day on nicer days, they'd hunker down and rest on days where the weather was too large a challenge to overcome.

The other group of four hikers led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set out on their itinerary with a more manageable, reasonable goal.  The second group chose to hike 20 miles a day, the weather being accommodating or not.

The winner was Amundsen's second group, who beat the British by a full 5 weeks!

So what does that mean for us to improve our productivity?

It's proof that taking large tasks and breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks is a great productivity tip.

Another example of this tactic is in Major League Baseball (MLB).

 In a recent study, MLB points out that starting pitchers that go the full game, called a complete game in the parlance, is down in recent years.

In fact, in the MLB study, they claim that of all the 2,700+ games or so, only 60 complete games were recorded. That equals only one complete game for every 45.6+ starts.

Of course, there are factors that come into play with these statistics, such as highly specialized relievers or games being broken up by the offensive team in the late innings for examples.

It also means that it's much, much harder to do something of quality over long periods of time.

Sustainability is one of the keys then.

Most MLB pitchers work about 5 innings or have a total pitch count before they're substituted for, with another 4-5 days off before their next start. Simply put, shorter durations of pitching with longer recovery as a tactic is supported by the previous data.

To Make A Change Requires A Conscious Choice

So what do the Antarctic expeditions and Major League Baseball analogies have to teach us about behavioral changes and improve our productivity?

They teach us that having short, obtainable goals can get us further than running to our limits of endurance or trying to do things only when conditions are near perfect.

So how do we make the incremental changes to have monumental gains?

In a recent blog post on the Psychology Today website, they discuss the problems of changing habits and how to make long-term behavioral changes more effective.

The slant of the article was that there are some concrete steps that have to be taken to make positive changes in our behaviors, and that without these steps, behavioral modification - habit formation - can be extremely difficult.

5 Tips To Make A Change For The Better

1. Decide To Make A Change:  

To make a substantial change, you need to make a clear decision that there is something that needs to change.  It could be something life altering such as eating healthier and beginning an exercise routine, or something minor like waking up 15 minutes earlier every day.  The point is that there needs to be something that you recognize as a problem and one that you want to correct.

The next step after deciding you want to make a change is the hardest.  Believe that change is possible.  If your habit is being late for everything, and you believe that you're destined to be tardy to things, you'll never make that change.  So the struggle is to decide that the bad habit is something that needs to be changed, and you need to change your thinking about tackling that problem.

2. Think About Why The Problem Exists: 

If you're chronically tardy, why is that?  Is it you're easily distracted and lose track of time, traffic is poor in your area, or something else?  It could also be a subtle issue of control - controlling the times of other people's involvement with you, placing a subconscious hierarchy that places yourself over others.  Perhaps it's a subtle grab for attention.  Take a hard look at why tardiness is a chronic condition. If it's attention, think about ways to get that attention in other, more positive ways.

3. Inning by Inning or Step By Step: 

Just as it's difficult to win a baseball game from first pitch to final out, making a behavioral change requires a lot of small, adjustable steps to make it permanent. The focus at this point should be to set goals that are closer to where we're starting off rather than where we plan on ending up.  For example, the article discusses a scenario where if the problem is being tardy by 30 minutes, try to set a more obtainable goal of only being late by 10 or 15 minutes.

By establishing shorter goals, you'll see quick victories and that sense of achievement will build momentum toward the next goal. Master one small step then add on a new step, like climbing a set of stairs. It's the process of meeting small goals on a step by step basis that helps you reach your destination much easier, and much more permanent.

The reason for this is that we are hard-wired in our brains to make regular actions into habits over time.  By making small improvements, we're building the neural pathways that help establish a new routine and that routine is what we're doing to establish new habits.

In other words, think about habit formation as a baseball team.  Win the game with a majority of pitchers in each inning rather than relying on one pitcher to carry the team to the final out.

4. Accept Slip-Ups:  

The mistake that most people make when changing their behavior and habits is that they approach it from an absolutist approach.  Absolutism is the "all-or-none", black or white approach.  The problem with this is that there isn't room for mistakes and slip-ups, which is part of the process of behavioral modification.

One of the biggest mistakes dieters make is focusing on the short-term benefits and goals of changing their eating habits rather than the long-term benefits.  We choose to lose 5 extra pounds and are really good for a few days.

But then we slip up.  And then we beat ourselves up about the mess up.

The absolute approach is one of the problems.

Knowledge is experiential.  We learn by doing, but more important, we learn by making mistakes through trial and error.  Making a change in our habits is a process of learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior.

Diets that stick are ones that follow the guidelines outlined above. Steps that successful dieters take are deciding to make a change, examining why they've adopted the negative behaviors, to creating a process of smaller victories over large changes.

One other thing that helps lifestyle diets make the biggest change is the ability to understand that mistakes are going to happen.  You're changing a habit, which takes time and concentrated effort, and so mistakes are inevitable.

So the best advice is to plan for those slip-ups.

We can convince ourselves that it's ok to have a "cheat day" once a week.  Over time that cheat day isn't so important, and we can eventually limit those days to twice a month and then to never after we achieve new habits.

5. Make Your Habit Accountable: 

After we realize that there’s a need for change, and we decide to take action, the next step is to make our goals accountable.

There are two ways to make your goals and habits accountable within the guidelines we’ve discussed already.

The first is to make a small table or calendar to chart your progress.  For example, as a writer there’s a number of directions each character could go within the plot of the story arc.

If you write each one out, we end up with pages of unnecessary deviations from the central point and waste a bunch of time.

Perhaps it’s the thought of writing the book in your mind that’s limiting you.  By taking small, decisive steps each and every day, the word count stacks up over time.

A good example is to take a calendar and put a large “X” for every day you write.   Jerry Seinfeld spoke about this as his way of holding himself accountable for his creative work.

What it requires is marking a calendar with an “X” every day you write to a word count or duration of time eventually the calendar becomes blotted by all the marks.

It becomes a tool to hold you accountable, one with its own momentum, a chain of action that you can see and reflect upon. In his discussion of his creative technique, Jerry Seinfeld said, “don’t break the chain.”

The second way to hold yourself accountable is to set your goals and tell others about it.  Ask friends and family to give you subtle reminders any time that they see you slipping up or not making headway in your process.

Be careful about this, however.

Asking friends and family to help you can also become annoying if you only tell them the overall goal.  The further you are from where you want to be the more it will appear to them that you may not be working hard enough.

So give them small goals to help oversee with your behaviors rather than the final destination of your goal.

This is an example why business coaching is such a lucrative profession.  Business coaches work with individuals, typically entrepreneurs, to hold them to small goals for their business and professional growth.

The coaches may have an idea of the overall goal for the business growth, but they focus on more manageable steps that the individual can accomplish.  This helps the entrepreneur stay on task and keep clear metrics in mind.

In Conclusion

We all want to improve at something.  From losing weight, playing a piece of music, to writing and business productivity, setting small manageable goals will help create regular actions that will develop into new habits.

And by taking decisive actions with the help of professionals and friends, we're apt to follow through with our plans, making our goals much more realistic.

It's by deciding what we want to change and the small steps we need to take that the impossible becomes possible.  It's true in sports and business, it's true in writing and other creative endeavors, and it's true with health and fitness.

So decide what you want to change and get started now.

JUST GET THE DAMNED THING STARTED

You Never Know Enough

Why Waiting For Permission Is The Greatest Mistake You'll Make

In the past, I've written about my self-publishing journey through Kindle Publishing as well as tips on how to manage your time more effectively, conquer your fears and improve your productivity.

None of those tips matter if you don't take action.

The biggest hurdle for anything is often the first one.

If you're like me, you're always thinking about new places to go visit, new adventures, always sketching out new ideas for stories or making plans for new career paths.


In other words you have interest in doing something out of the norm and out of your comfort zone.

Perhaps you want to start a creative project like taking up guitar or painting.

Maybe you want to leave your job to start a new business, or perhaps you don't enjoy your classes and want to find a new degree emphasis to focus upon.

But you never get started.

Why?

We're convinced from everything in our lives that we need permission to do something.

This has been called the permission mindset. (Read about the limitations of this HERE)

In school we seek permission to leave our seat, to get up and go to the bathroom.

As kids and teenagers, we seek permission from our parents to go to a movie, or stay overnight at a friends house.

We ask permission before we begin to study a certain subject in school. The idea being that we need our parents and other agencies to help foster us during our curriculum, with the trade-off that we will have stable job prospects and eventually (hopefully) pay them back.

We seek permission from our bosses and HR to take time off from work outside of the normal work schedule.

We ask permission to marry someone, and ask them permission to consider a career choice when our trajectories veer off our calculations.

In addition, we seek permission of the worst kind.

Permission from knowledge.

And that's the worst, most debilitating type of permission to wait for.

What's Permission From Knowledge? 

Simply put, we have been conditioned to seek permission from a source other than ourselves.  

But wait, isn't knowledge a good thing? 

Yes.  And no.  

When there's nobody to turn to, we seek information before acting.  We study up on the latest trends and modes of doing that thing we don't know enough about before we try to act.  

Thing is, there's always going to be something more to learn. 

Always something more to learn, something more you can improve upon.  

But that's it's own Sisyphean task.  It can never be accomplished.

You "push" the boulder up the hill, only to find it rolls down the other side.  Every time. 

It's both a coping mechanism and a stalling technique. 

We cope with our fear of not knowing by trying to learn more about a subject. 

In effect we stall all our actions as we chase down the rabbit hole of information.  

We're seeking permission from the knowledge that we gain in order to begin. 

But what really is happening? 

We are paralyzed by our inaction.  We are more content analyzing then acting.  

It's the Paralysis By Analysis effect. 

Look Before You Leap, But Dammit, Jump!

Just get going!

As I said earlier, the biggest challenge is often just getting started. 

It's also been said many times over that knowledge is experiential.  

We learn more by doing than observing and what separates those who do and those who don't is that the ones who act are more successful.

They don't wait for permission to act. 

Sometimes that learning process is messy.  You get on your bike, ride down the block a little too fast and fall, skinning your knee.  

But for sure, the next time you'll avoid the same mistakes.

The only way to know is by getting back on the bike and riding down the street again. 

And breaking the cycle that the permission mindset holds on us can be extremely difficult and limiting.  

I read about Kindle Publishing before I started working on self-publishing.

I don't know everything about it, nor do I understand how to market my stuff very well.

But I'm learning a ton as I stumble along, hopefully better and smarter today than I was yesterday. 

Whether you have a fitness goal, or a job prospect, the time to act is now. 

Get off the couch and get running.  

Spend a little time polishing up your resume and send it out.  

Call a potential new client.  

Whatever your desire is, get off your ass and get it done.  

You should know what you're getting into, that much is for sure.  

But it shouldn't hold you back.  

You don't need permission to get started. 

Just get going. 

2 Simple Ways To Overcome Your Greatest Challenges In Minutes A Day

Become A Master In Just Minutes A Day

The greatest challenge to anything we want to achieve, whether it's my kindle publishing journey, an athlete trying to win a game, or a musician to master the lines of a play or musical score isn't what you think.

It's not money, or time, or passion.  Those are all great hurdles that must be overcome.

But for you to accomplish anything that matters, you have to over come one obstacle that is greater than the rest.

Doubt.

It's easy to doubt what we know in the heat of the moment, or what we have done countless times before.

How is it that doubt has such a strong pull on us?

Whether we're playing music, or as an athlete, a writer, actor or even a fireman, doubt serves a number of purposes.

We all experience doubt at some point of our lives.  It usually stems from a feeling of being overwhelmed, unprepared or not ready for the task at hand.

I recently published 3 short stories on Amazon's Kindle Publishing platform and wasn't sure how they would do.  These were stories I wrote some time ago and had multiple readers on so I was aware of how their general reception may be.

But I still had doubt.

Doubt in my abilities as a writer. Doubt in whether I could get them uploaded properly onto the Kindle Publishing page and promoted through Amazon.

Worse yet, I doubted whether anyone would notice.

Doubt is natural, yet it plays a malicious role in our minds.

However, on one level, doubt also serves as a survival mechanism.

It tells the baser, lessor part of our brains what traps to avoid, and what to fear.

In essence, doubt serves as the catalyst to fear.

For example:

It's 2 a.m. and you're dead asleep in your bed.  In the other room, the smoke detector sounds and you shoot up like a jack-in-the-box from bed with your heart in your throat and ears, deadening the sound. The room is still and dark. You don't smell any smoke and there doesn't appear to be the orange hue of flicker-flames lighting your room.  As the alarm stops and you listen. You listen some more. There's nothing but your breathing making any sound, and you still don't smell any smoke. Do you get out of bed to check around your place, or do you lay back down and fall asleep, only to wake again and again, unsure if the house is on fire?

Doubt can also prove to be a positive thing as in the example above.  Doubting whether all is calm, or whether you should examine your house for flames is a way of protecting yourself.

Doubt can also cause us to overreact.

Paralysis By Analysis: The Comfort of Staying On The Sidelines 

Paralysis by analysis, the process of overthinking before taking action.

Usually it's a coping mechanism that we use to stall our perceived fear of being unready, of being afraid to fail.

Too often it can dominate the mind of even the most accomplished individual.

To overcome this stalling technique, you need to leap before you feel ready.  There's always something more to learn, to study, to know.  But by taking small detailed steps, you can be confident in the area's you've mastered.



As athletes we can doubt our preparation.  The doubt could be in conditioning, or in the tactics or game plan.

We may worry about missing our relay exchange, or making a bad throw to a receiver, or missing the game winning free throw, even though these are relative tasks performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times in the daily ritual called practice.

For an actor or singer, flubbing a line that's rehearsed over and over again is akin to standing naked in front of the audience.  It ruins the moment, we "fall on our face" in front of a crowd.  Nothing is more terrifying than standing out in front of people you know, and some you don't, being ridiculed and recognized as a failure.

This doubt is an experience we all share.  The problem is that if we focus our energy on it, then becomes metastasized to something multiple times greater, fear.

And fear can also lead to paralysis by analysis.

"Paralysis by Analysis" is the process of overcompensating our fears by studying and preparing on our weaknesses without ever taking any action.

Thing is, once a little doubt creeps into our thoughts, it can grab hold and become insidious, wreaking havoc on your confidence in even the mundane tasks such as your personal warm-up routine.

It's a slippery slope, one that is easy to fall down.

Questions about out abilities and our preparation evolve from ones such as "am I good enough" to become "I'm not good enough to do x, y, z" in short time.

The onerous grip that doubt can play on our minds can lead to confusion, fear, and lack of action.

My own doubt about my writing and kindle publishing journey has made me rethink my ideas and how I've promoted my stories.

I've read countless books, blog posts and articles on the subject, trying to understand more about how to write, how to publish and how to promote the stories.

All because the doubt made me stand on the sidelines versus getting in the game.

So how do we conquer our doubt before it transmutates to overwhelming fear?

(Yes, I know "transmutates" is a derivative of tranmutation: the act of changing from one to another form and relates to shifting physical forms from one shape to the next. In physics it deals with the change that stems from an external force creating some new form or shape. As I'm using it here is a version I stole from a song that is a conjunction of transformation and mutation).

The key to overcoming doubt before it transmuates into something greater is to have detailed plans on how you prepare and to implement those plans in small incremental doses of time to allow mastery to take place.

Practice Makes Permanent  

Along with others such as Malcolm Gladwell and James Clear, I've written before about the concept of planning as relates to practice and mastery.


In order to achieve desired results that are born of confidence, you need to create small, incremental actions that are highly detailed for practice.

Perfect practice makes perfect.


So, in order to overcome doubt, there are two things we need to do.

1) First, create small, detailed lists of tasks that you can replicate over and over with regularity.  Think of a musician practicing their scales on the guitar.  You can go through the motions, learn the fingering and play a scale in a major key without problem.

But to become truly exceptional (or at least competently average) you need to practice a specific scale, in time, and with rhythm.  To play the scales forward, then back, perhaps only playing the root and second note of the scale, or starting at a different note and working around the scale from there would all be detailed tasks that you could learn to master in short time.

2) The second thing to building confidence and overcoming doubt is mastery through duration.

No, I don't mean playing the scales over and over again until rote memorization.  That may work for naming dates from a history book, but won't help you master the scales in any tangible way.

You need to work on a small selection of details that you hope to master in a short duration spread over time.

Our brains are an organ, true.  They are also considered a muscle and like all muscles they have a finite amount of energy and constantly need to be replenished.  To think that we can focus for long periods of time without fatigue is a failure of understanding of how the brain functions.

Short periods of highly focused time with breaks and rest-in-between activities is invaluable.  In past articles on time management, I've detailed the concept of the Pomodoro Technique - a technique that places focus on short intense periods of work, followed by short rest breaks.

Spend 10 minutes on a task.  Make your focus laser-tight. Take a short break from that activity and begin again.  Eventually you'll build up enough "endurance" to move onto another skill.

As Earnest Hemingway is credited with saying when talking about writing; "Write one true sentence.  Write the truest sentence you know."

The concept of writing one true sentence a day is a better way to master the art and skill of writing than trying to sit down and write a 600 page Russian opus.

The volume of pages, the quality of writing are all too daunting.

It's the small doses of highly focused practice that makes the biggest difference over a long period of time.

In other words, short, intense durations of highly focused activity have been proven methods to achieve mastery.

As proof, Charles Duhigg writes in his outstanding work about the power of habit formation and the reason behind what we do in his book, THE POWER OF HABIT. He details the science behind how we build habits, and that the key to establishing new patterns is to understand how habits are formed in the first place.

The point being, by taking short focused actions, we can achieve mastery of smaller functions.  By mastering smaller functions, we adopt confidence in our abilities, which in turn gives fuel to our performances.

No matter how accomplished or studied we are, doubt creeps in from time to time.

For creative types, it happens moment to moment and second by second.

Doubt can serve as a powerful survival mechanism and it can also be debilitating.

Regardless of how you feel doubt, the key to overcoming it is in mastering small details.

The 3 Things I Learned Releasing 3 Short Stories In 3 Months

My Kindle Publishing Journey Updated

In 3 months I released 3 different short stories and focused all my attention on promoting just one title.  

Here's what I learned:

Lesson 1: Promote The Hell Out Of It

The first thing I learned was the need for promotion. 

In June 2015, I released The Ballad Of John Walker through Amazon's Kindle Publishing platform.

For those unfamiliar with Kindle Publishing, it's an eBook delivery service run by Amazon that offers millions, perhaps billions of titles.  The best part is you don't need to buy a Kindle to read their offerings. You can access their library by downloading a free Kindle Reader App for all devices, PC, Mac, Android, Windows and iOS.

And I promoted the HELL out of it.

Places I promoted the title were:

• Google Plus
• Facebook - private and in groups
• Facebook Ad
• Good Reads
• Daily Free ebooks
• Addicted To eBooks
• Just Kindle Books
• That's My eBook
• Book Praiser
• Free Discounted Books
• Reddit 

I promoted the story on these format as well as the programs that Amazon offers on their Kindle Publishing platform - KDP Select - an exclusivity program that allows for free and discounted pricing.

For two months I spent my entire time promoting the title to free and paid platforms and may have received a lot of virtual pat's on my back, but actual downloads of the book?  About 100 titles in all.

While 100 readers may seem like a lot, it's a small trickle in the bucket that is floating in the sea that is the Kindle Publishing platform (among others).

And Then...

Lesson 2: Nobody Gives A S#IT If You Don't Promote

Shortly after I published "The Ballad of John Walker", I quietly released a second collection, a three-story title, Mayonnaise and Other Stories and the downloads were about 1/10th of what I experienced previously.

The main difference? I hardly promoted the title compared to "The Ballad of John Walker".

Mayonnaise and Other Stories was enrolled in KDP Select. I made mention of it on G+ and Facebook.

That was about the extent of it.

And the downloads and reviews were stagnant.  Sitting online waiting to be stumbled upon, to be discovered, but was more like a lonely Pygmy Tarsier looking for a lover.  What's a Pygmy Tarsier?  Google it, they're a primate that was thought to be extinct until one was inadvertently killed in a trap.

It was a shock to the farmers who found the Pygmy Tarsier, and even more so for the scientists who had claimed it an extinct species.  But I wonder more about the possible remaining Pygmy Tarsier, waiting for her date to come and sweep her off her feet.

So the lonely Pygmy Tarsier can't just swipe right on Tinder or sign-up on Ashley Madison, but just has to sit around waiting.

She's without any loved one and probably, like most of us who've been stood-up before, crying into the night. Sad.

Much like the collection "Mayonnaise and Other Stories".

By not promoting it, the collection is sitting around waiting for a date that may never arrive.

Especially if it's considered extinct.

But Wait, There's More...

Lesson 3: Keep At It, But Don't Over Do It

In late July 2015, I uploaded another title, It's Not The Things We Say with the same little, to no, marketing and advertising.

Like all things in life, momentum is created by exerting energy.  I did nothing to create any momentum behind the titles, in part because I was concerned about "Promotion Fatigue" and "Banner Blindness" on the part of any readers here.

"Promotion Fatigue" is what I call the process when we're inundated by too much advertising and marketing.  We get tired of it and tune out the messenger.

"Banner Blindness" has been defined as the blurring of banners and ads online from the original content.  It's the visual representation of Promotion Fatigue.  We know that there is something like an ad being displayed but we have become so inundated by their constant placement, we tune them out.

So between my concern about Promotion Fatigue, Banner Blindness and looking at the ROI - Return On Investment - that slowed my marketing and promotional reach.

But with a few more titles on the near horizon that I'm working on right now, "A Fine Day For A Swim" and its sister accompaniment, "The Palm", as well as "Gunner", I'll have to rethink my promotional strategies.

Additionally the long-term plan is to comprise these published stories into a larger collection and place it on a few other platforms such as iBooks, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

So, if you've been one of the few who have downloaded my short stories so far, a huge THANK YOU.

For those that haven't - I don't take it personally.  I'll just cry into my pillow until you do purchase one.


If you'd like to download a copy of any of my titles, click the titles below:

The Ballad Of John Walker

Mayonnaise And Other Stories

It's Not The Things We Say

3 Tips To Conquer Your Fears And Become The Person You Deserve

The Secret To Becoming Superhuman

Change Comes Slow While Excuses Are Fear By Another Name

(click HERE To See The Outstanding Book: The Power of Habit)

Not many of us can be born as Superman.  There's only one. And he was an alien at that.

Peter Parker wouldn't have become Spiderman except by accidental happenstance.

And the winner of the most recent lottery may have been handed a HUGE financial windfall from the Universe, but for most of us, change isn't a lightning bolt from the blue.

You lie awake at night thinking about how you can get xyz done at work the next day or how you need to exercise first thing when you wake up.

The alarm goes off and wham! You're too tired to lace up your shoes to go for a run.

Or the kids come running into the kitchen screaming for breakfast and poof!

There goes the time you had planned to read that chapter in your sci-fi novel that you were hoping to dig into before hand.

It's easy to think about change.

But hard to act to make those changes.

To make a change in your habits, routines, productivity and health is really about making a change in YOU.

Work, Love, Health, Wealth (or lack thereof) - All Roadblocks To Change

If something matters, if something is really important to you, you'll find a way. 

There are roadblocks and obstacles in all our lives. It could be our jobs, our families, our state of health. 

Other things that may hold us back from making a change all fall under the umbrella of fear.  We're afraid we could be wrong.  Or that we're not capable of reaching our goals.

We all share in the fear.

The key is to identify those fears:

• Fear: We're afraid we may fail
• Fear: Afraid of the discomfort that comes with change
• Fear: Scared of the unknown and what may come from it
• Fear: Doubt in your skills and abilities
• Fear: Terror in not being "good enough"

And the biggest FEAR of all?

Perfectionism.

It does NOT exist.  It's something to dream about, to aspire toward, but too often we use it as a crutch, as a distraction from what we are capable of doing.

It prevents us from getting started.

So how do you avoid these little distractions becoming major obstacles?

The key is to set realistic and identifiable metrics that you can meet.

Follow these 3 tips to become Superhuman.

1. Decide what you want to get done.
2. Break the task into smaller steps that you can do in less time with less effort.
3. Prioritize those steps into 3 things you can do right away, number them from 1 to 3.

Don't worry if there's more than 3 things.  You're focusing on the 3 steps you can take right away.

Set aside a realistic amount of time to get these done.  It may be 10 minutes, or more if you need it, but this time is immutable.  It can't be negotiated away or ignored.

It is absolute.

Don't have 10 minutes?  Bullshit.

Set an alarm to wake up 20 minutes earlier.  If you're normally a 7 a.m. type of person, you are now a 6:40 a.m. type of person.  Or if you go to bed at 11 p.m. (or 1 a.m. for some), then you're now 11:20 p.m.

This needs to be the same routine every day.

You need to LOVE Change.


You need to commit to the process.


It needs to be an everyday thing for you.


You're trying to make the change a new habit.









From there you're trying to make it from a habit to involuntary action.  Like taking a breath or a heartbeat.

You're establishing a daily routine that reaches the point of Automacy - the state of action that is automatic. In other words it doesn't take mental energy or focus to take action.

The most important factor in behavioral change is the discipline and focus on daily, manageable action.

It's dedication.

It's a commitment.

And it's practice.

But highly focused practice.

Until it's no longer necessary to focus on the actions, or until you just find yourself doing those actions without even knowing you began.

When you catch yourself "in the moment" and don't remember how it began.

A very smart person once told me, "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect".

Said another way:

Practice makes permanent.

And permanence will make you merely human, or superhuman.

How To Get Better At Damn-Well Anything

From Kindle Publishing To Sports And More, Become A Master At Anything With These Tips

This post started out as an answer to a question on Quora.

For those of you not familiar with Quora, it's a question and answer platform much like eHow or Answers.com that allows you to use social networking to get answers to your questions, or offering up solutions to the questions being asked.

The original question was how to get better at creative writing.

But honestly, these tips could be used to help you achieve efficiency in pretty much any task you'd like to improve on.

How To Get Better At Writing In 3 Steps

Some of what I'm going to discuss is how to get better in phases. 

The first is the process phase.  This is sitting down, doing the grunt work.  Digging the trenches that are necessary to build your story's universe.  It's the outline, the foundation, the skeleton of getting better. 

The second phase with getting better is called the craft phase of writing.  It's mastering the language and techniques.  It's learning how to edit your writing to make it crisp, or as Earnest Hemingway said "write one true sentence". 

Finally, you need to learn time management skills or as I call it, the life phase.  It's too easy to get distracted, allowing the outside world to interrupt what you're exploring in the inner-most crevices of your imagination.  So learning how to focus on one task then moving on will help you become more effective as well as more efficient. 

The Process Phase

The process phase is like these gears. 

They grind and grind, turning each other in unison, propelling the machine forward. 

If one doesn't work, they whole machine ends.

You need to write.  

The process of writing isn't one that you do only inspired. You need to sit down and work on writing everyday. 

If you want to get better at the process, you need to sit down in the chair (metaphorically speaking) and write.  

You'll learn as you go.  

But basically sit down and write. 

Write daily, regularly even.  

This is true of any task.  From writing, to playing the guitar, to playing basketball.  It's due to spending the necessary time, the hours, needed to get better. 

As I said, write daily, regularly even.  

Jerry Seinfeld talked about not breaking the chain.  He would post a calendar on his wall and make a big "X" every day that he wrote.  Eventually the process took on it's own importance. 

To learn and master a task, you get better by doing a task in specific time periods with highly-focused repetition.  Malcolm Gladwell discusses this as the 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers: The Story of Success: Malcolm Gladwell: 9780316017930: Amazon.com: Books

But don't worry if, right now, you don't have a lot of time to write.  

You're learning how to get better.  It takes time. 

You need to build up the muscle, and that takes practice to build the endurance.  

Stephen King talks about how he began his writing career by prioritizing and finding time at lunch at his job. He talks about that in his outstanding book, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft eBook: Stephen King: Kindle Store

Charles Bukowski wrote while working for the US mail department. 

Meanwhile, digital and ebook sensation Hugh Howey (hugh howey: Kindle Store) began to write while working at a bookstore, using his lunch hour to get some prose worked out. 

In that time Hugh Howey wrote his bestseller, WOOL to much acclaim and literally much fortune. 

So it can be done. 

The Craft Phase

To learn the craft of writing involves a few different things.  The first thing to consider is, again, sit down and write.  

Then edit your writing.  But get someone else to look it over.  Preferably someone with more than just basic grammar skills.  Get someone with the ability to take a red line through your most important prose.  Find a set of eyes more clear than your own. A set of eyes that can see the forest AND the trees. 

Then, take the time to think about what it all means, what you're trying to say. What is the larger picture, the broader message of what you're trying to convey.  

This is the theme of your work. 

For a doctor it may be the health of her patients.  For a mechanic it's fixing and maintaining the life of your transmission.  

To the teacher the theme of their work is to make an indelible imprint on the future of society, one student at a time. 

So theme is important. 

Meanwhile, you also need to get better at how to write. 

One major way to accelerate this growth is to mimic a master.  

You should write in your own voice, but should also try styles of those you admire.  

Just sit down, write the first 3 pages of a novel or story you like.  Imitate what someone has already done, and done well.  This is not to publish a plagiarized story, but to learn on a different level the song, the flow that a writer that's not you has already accomplished.  

Think about it in a different art form.  

Musicians learn to play other musicians songs.  

Classic painters are taught to outline and trace the lines and brush strokes of masters.  

The Guild Approach To Apprenticeship

In the past, there were guilds where artists spent years, ten years in fact, under the guidance of a master.  

There were guilds for masonry, guilds for artists, for tanners, for iron workers.  These were kind of like modern unions but ones dedicated to bettering the craft of the practitioners. 

But the work was grueling.  

The apprentice would clean, sweep up the studio, do whatever menial task that was needed to be done.  

It was the karate kid routine of cleaning the pigs stye, of cleaning the slop up for the master in order to make the master's job easier.  

But it also served a larger purpose. 

The master didn't teach the student about everything that they knew, rather it was up to the student to study and mimic the master until one day the student was able to move on from apprenticeship to craftsman.  

Over years of working on the craft, and only after all of those years would they move from craftsman to master. 

Why? 

To learn what works for others and gain the foundation and the fundamentals of what others have mastered.  

Actors take lessons from coaches. Even Academy Award winners take classes to get better. 

Singers have a teacher to make sure that the singer is hitting the right notes and staying in time.  

You learn by doing.  And you learn more by getting corrections from someone who knows. 

Perhaps it's time to bring back the guilds...

The Life Phase

This section is divided into two sub-categories.  The creative side and the discipline side.  

The ultimate battle between the id and the ego.  

In the life phase of getting better at writing, you need to live it.  

Live your life.  Go on walks, commune with nature.  Touch your feet on sand and your face into water. 

Observe the way the light reflects in the trees while the sun is setting.  

Record every moment of it.  Document it.  Write it all down, write it down over and over again.  

Sit in a park and listen to how people talk, touch, laugh and cry with each other.  

Somewhere these observations will appear in the story.  The'll appear when you need them the most, even if they only appear in one story and limited to a line in length.  

The second section of the life phase is time management. 

It's the ego of your creative side.  The one where, just like in the process phase, you sit down and get to work.  

But you need to be organized - one of ego's greater traits - when you do this. 

Life Happens.  

It happens to everyone, everywhere.  We have a finite amount of time on this Earth, and with it, we have a finite amount of energy to accomplish all that we want. 

And life doesn't care that you're spinning the All-American Masterpiece in your skull, waiting to unleash it on the world.  You have bills to pay, mouths to feed and jobs to get to in order to take care of those responsibilities.  

There's never a good time to get started, there'll always be something else that comes up.  

So you need to find a way to block out the time and sequester yourself within your world. 

Find a way to turn off emails and your phone.  For god's sake turn off your phone. And TV is a no-no.  It will suck the minutes and hours from you like a Vampire draining a victim.  

One technique to help is set realistic time goals. 

The Pomodoro Technique

 I've written about this before on the blog, and you can check out the articles by clicking HERE (The Pomodoro Technique)  and HERE (Time Management Tips).

What the Pomodoro Technique teaches is to set small standards of time with specific breaks built into the process.  

First, get a timer.  

Set it for a small, realistic amount of time you can work on your writing (or any other task).  

Second, sit down and write (or get to work). 

Third, and this is most important, when the timer goes off, take a specific break from ALL activities.  

STOP - that's the key.  When the timer sounds, you have to stop.  Get up and get away from what you were working on.  

The recommended start is 20 minutes of work, followed by 5 minutes of ZERO activities related to the work you were doing. It'll help you relax.  

   

 It's interval training for work.

Just like a workout plan, you need time to recover those muscles that you were exerting, and we all know that the brain is an organ but also one giant muscle. 

That means it needs down time after exertion as well. 

Anything you want to master is a process.  You wouldn't want a surgeon coming straight from High School to perform open-heart surgery on you, would you? 

Of course not.  

It takes years of practice, focused, attentive practice to master a subject.  But if you work daily, on small manageable tasks, you too can master what you're after. 

These 3 phases of task mastery we discussed will help you become better, faster.  

From the process phase to the craft phase and finally, the life phase, learning how to manage all three will help you. 

But you have to sit down and start.  That's the secret to any journey.