| What works for me is trying to find the right way of 'tricking' myself. Every few months I feel like I have a week that is not as productive as I believe I could have been, I then basically try a trick (often something that worked for me in the past, but sometime a new trick that I might find on a site like this one). Some tricks that have worked have been: 1. Pomodoro (actually more specifically: http://tomato.es/). 2. Redefining what I wanted to get done: For example, I used to want to run 30 minutes 5 days a week, but found that I was not able to start doing it because of being busy, tired, or for some excuse. So, I chose a distance that I could easily do in 20 minutes and decided that no matter what I had to do the distance, if only by walking. Not only did I do it with this new definition, but my excuse of being busy driving me to actually run instead of walk. 3. Making a commitment with a friend on a similar topic: This would mean reading at the same time, cooking, sleeping, etc. 4. Getting a new toy related to the task to get me to do something slightly different. This could be buying a new book on the topic, or a pad to take notes. 5. Making a commitment to much smaller sub goals when doing the task. 6. Trying to list and prioritize the easier sub-tasks so that I fool myself into making progress. 7. The carrot and the stick: I let myself get a nice breakfast outside when I wake up earlier (or do something that I have been needing to do), and I sometime say that there has to be some penalty (like not sleeping until I finish atleast one task). 8. First thing in the morning: Trying to do a quick version of the task before I do anything morning. This to me means before making any decisions (involved in serious tasks), as well as before consuming any content (blog posts, e-mails, etc). To add a little more to the above, I take pride in me persevering, so if I actually do try a new 'trick', I work at it - often taking a few weeks to make it happen. And I often get it into my routine if only for a few more weeks. |
I really like the one about waking up earlier, I think I'll try that out sometime.