Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

...Yet Get Things Done.

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Stay Lazy!

2012 Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

About The Author

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht, is a licensed Hypnotherapist and NLP trainer. After years of extensive experience as a private therapist in Woodland Hills, CA, he has started a popular blog/magazine on NLP & Hypnosis (available now as: NLPkb), with more than 25,000 readers. Shlomo authored several best-sellers on NLP, such as The Big Book of NLP Techniques.

Content
Introduction Procrastination Laziness A Lesson In Unproductive Working The Keys to Effortless Productivity The 80/20 Rule Sprints Creating Simplicity Effective and Ineffective Procrastination Effortless Productivity Q&A

Books to Consider
* The Big Book of NLP Techniques: 200+ Patterns & Strategies of Neuro Linguistic Programming * Essentials of NLP: 150 Questions & Answers * NLP Mastery * Pain Away: Advanced Mental Techniques for Immediate & Long Lasting Relief

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.

Spanish Proverb

THE ELUSIVE ART OF EFFORTLESS PRODUCTIVITY

by Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Introduction
Time is the most valuable asset that we possess. Most people can benefit from re-engineering their relationship with time. Everyone can learn something from the concept of effortless productivity. People need to learn how to better use their time to be productive in a way that makes tasks seem to be easier. Effortless productivity can transform your life, making you able to complete more tasks every day. Time is a commodity that is often misused. This may not just be by you; others can also misuse your time if you let them. People can learn a lot in particular by keeping an eye on the passing of time. By understanding how you spend your time, you can discover where your use of time is not productive. By keeping track of the minutes and hours and your usage of them, you can learn how to use time more effectively. One way to do this is to place a good and easily visible nagging clock in every area that you use for work. Another means is to use a timer for your telephone, if you spend a lot of time on it. For entrepreneurs, time is needed to help you convert your knowledge and
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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

talent into money. However, there is not a single soul on the planet who manages to get in eight productive hours a day at work.

Procrastination
In the dictionary, procrastination is defined as,

in the right way, procrastination can be useful and it can support effortless productivity, provided that you know how, and you can embrace it.

Laziness
Laziness is another term that has a bad press. The dictionary does nothing to aid this, defining the word lazy as:

To put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

Procrastination is not necessarily a bad thing, and does not need to be stopped per se; however, it can be unproductive if not used effectively. Often people procrastinate because tasks seem too complicated, or they are afraid of making a decision. This can hold people back from success. No one can argue that big decisions should be considered carefully, but over-thinking and over-analyzing situations to the point where it becomes impossible to make a decision or get on with a task is obviously not productive. Delaying things until tomorrow just means that tomorrow becomes more stressful in many cases. Some examples: Deciding that something else is more important than the task at hand and making the new task more important in your mind. Deciding that a job is too hard or too easy and not putting sufficient time into it. Taking a break for 10 minutes that turns into a day-long break. Pretending that the task does not exist. Telling yourself that the task can wait. Working on the simpler parts of the task, but avoiding the harder parts. Traditionally, procrastination is considered to be bad. However, it is not in fact a mental issue that you have. Nor is it a bug in your personality. If used

Averse or disinclined to work, activity or exertion; indolent.

However, being lazy is not the same as being inefficient or being non-productive. Laziness is actually a natural state. You will often notice your pet cat or dog sitting around sleeping all day - and theres a good reason for that. It is not because they are lazy. Laziness is not a choice that we (or they) make. Instead, it is a survival instinct. People, like all animals, naturally save energy for emergency situations. You will generally find that when you are right on the edge and when you have to take action, your body will help you to find the powers and energy to do so immediately.

Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill. - Christopher Parker
As a student you maybe left your papers and thesis until the last minute. Maybe you completed them just a few hours before the final deadline was approaching. You may have even pulled an allnighter to get them done. However hard it was though, you managed to find the energy to get it done somehow. This is a common approach and the reason is not because you are lazy, but because instead, urgency pulls on your preserved ambition, so you are able to get it done.

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

One way to become effortlessly productive is to work toward simplicity in your life. Keeping things simple helps to encourage productivity because things do not seem so complex that you do not want to tackle them. The dictionary defines simple as:

A Lesson In Unproductive Working

Of course it can be hard to change your mindset overnight, but you need to start somewhere. Consider this for an example. Work day hours are very different than productivity hours. That is because an hour of a working day is not always spent being highly productive. In most cases it is quite the opposite. A study reported on in Personnel Today in 2005 found that 50 percent of employees said that they waste between two and hour hours every day on non-productive work when in the office, e.g. travel time, chatting with colleagues, etc.

Easy to understand, easy to use, easy to deal with, etc.

Taking steps in your life to make sure that everything that you are involved in is easy to understand, use and deal with will certainly make you more productive, and it will be effortless. Being more effortlessly productive will bring all kinds of benefits into your life. It will mean that you manage to achieve more in less time. It will enable you to expend less energy to complete tasks than you took in the past. It will free up more of your time to allow you to do what you want to, or to do what you do best, whatever that happens to be. It will help you to make complex tasks more simple, by breaking them down into their component parts, which are more easily tackled and less overwhelming. Above all, it will make your procrastination more effective, so that you are generally more productive with it. All it really takes is the changing of your mindset to start seeing things in different ways, and handling tasks in a more effective manner. It requires an open mind and a new way of looking at things, to be able to make it work. Instead of looking at tasks in a complex manner, and trying to work within the complexity, effortless productivity helps you to break things down.

lways ew a e b o "T live a n e to o t g n m i intend ver to nd ti man if a t ne life, bu t it; this is as g and u in set abo d put off eat from one shoul eping r, till he e l s d n the ng a drinki night to ano troyed." d s day an rved and de is sta otson l l i T n op Joh h s i b h - Arc

From this, assuming an eight hour working day, it is possible to estimate that for 50 percent of any workforce, anywhere between a quarter and a half of their day is unproductive. Going with the middle figure, it can be said that one third of these employees time in 50% of cases is unproductive.

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

If an employee earns 1000 Euros per month, and it is assumed that there are 160 hours in a given month, then this employee is earning 6.25 Euros per hour. However, if you divide that time (the 160 hours) by a third, you will find that 53.3 hours per month are unproductive for 50 percent of these employees, and 106.6 hours are actually productive. If you divide the 1000 Euros that we are paying them per month by 106.6, you will find that we are actually paying these employees 9.38 Euros per productive hour that they have. This quick calculation gives you food for thought on productivity. It gives you a clear meter for your employees time consumption. For example, is it worth it to you to spend 9.38 Euros to empty the trash, or for them to spend an hour on the telephone waiting for a vendor to send a fax to the company? What all of this means, is that employee time (and also your time) must be calculated in exactly the same way. You need to consider investment versus expense versus profits. You could use this formula to calculate out exactly how much time staff meetings cost you. Just put the numbers in the

formula to see. You will perhaps be shocked at the outcome. Instead of holding a staff meeting to discuss the importance of office cleanliness and hygiene, a meeting that may cost you hundreds of Euros (depending of course on the size of your team), it may just be simpler to send them a short memo, or attach a note to the door where everyone can see it. This will save time and money for everyone, and is much more effortlessly productive than holding a meeting. In whatever ways you can, in your business you need to seek leverage. In terms of work productivity, leverage is the difference between the base cost for your hour and the amount of money you get for it or from it. There are approximately 1760 work day hours per year. You will find when you start working on this that most people will find ways to avoid productivity a and will waste their NLP is ot a time, even if they x, N Toolbo sion! have to work at it to Profes do so!

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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

Meetings are really a great time waster and a drain on effortless productivity. Being in meetings is seductive for people. It makes people feel important, and it is a really good way of being able to hide from making and taking responsibility for decisions. It might be better termed Meetingitis since it is like a disease that turns businesses into unproductive, indecisive, slow moving coffee klatches. Of course, if you really do have to meet, change the way that you do it to make it more effective. Set up the meeting for right before lunch, or to be held close to the end of the day. This means that everyone wants the meeting to be over quickly. This will avoid the issue of people going off topic, because everyone will want to get out soon. You need to bear in mind that most people work slowly. As such is it good to put a stop to interruptions for both them and you. This will have a very positive effect on your productivity, multiplying it. Do not allow people to think that they can waste time. Be careful around the word should. This word implies entitlement. The problem with entitlement thinking is that it is viral and rots out businesses. Instead of words like should that are related to unimportant tasks, ensure that employees spend their time on money making activities. To do this of course you need to be in control. Without being in control it is not possible to be productive.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

- King Solomon

"Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all." - Mignon McLaughlin

"If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin." - Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

THE KEYS TO EFFORTLESS PRODUCTIVITY

There are four keys to effortless productivity:
1. Unrealistically short time frames the thing with allowing yourself a time frame to achieve something, is that youll find that you always fill up the allotted time somehow. If you tell yourself that you are giving yourself four hours to complete a task, it will take you that full four hours to complete it. Sometimes it will take you even longer to achieve. Effortless productivity requires that you set yourself unrealistic short time frames. Try giving yourself five minutes to complete every task and see how that works out for you. Youll surely find that you start getting more done. Five minutes might not be your optimal time, but find something that works for you, that is unrealistically short. Most self-help programs that revolve around productivity will advocated marathon style activity, but you will probably find that sprint activity (the unrealistically short time frames) will work better for you in actually enabling you to get things done. This action will help you to work quickly over a very short period and get the most important tasks carried out more rapidly. 2. Simplicity simplicity is critical to your effortless productivity. If something takes more than two words to define, it is useless and can hinder your efforts rather than helping you to succeed. In addition, anything that cannot be demonstrated in one illustratable action is too complex and will not be helpful in driving your success. Rather than making things complicated, take steps to keep them simple. Your thinking should be action oriented and based on cause and effect. That is, one cause and one effect. This should be applied to all areas of your life, to keep your life as simple as possible. 3. Majoring in Major Things what this key means is that you should not major in things that are minor. You should instead put major efforts into major things and minor efforts into minor things. Here, the 80/20 rule may be applied. The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle or Paretos Law and it was defined by an Italian economist (Pareto) who found that 80 percent of Italys wealth was owned by 20 percent of the countrys population. This 80/20 rule has been found to be applicable to all areas of life, not just Italian wealth. It is usually demonstrable that 20 percent of your actions will give you 80 percent of your results. If this is the case, then it makes sense to really hone in and focus on the 20 percent. You could even consider letting the 80 percent take care of itself. After all, if it is not bringing anything in for you, why focus on it at all? It is often found that the 80 percent is made up of many time wasting activities that are disguised as important and / or urgent tasks. In the vast majority of cases, the 80 percent can be dropped. If you are running a business, and 80 percent brings in 20 percent of your return on investment, then you should certainly be investigating this issue. Of

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

course, it may be challenging to be able to identify which factors fit into the 80 percent and which fall under the 20 percent of highly lucrative actions. Because of this, it can be challenging to know exactly what to drop and when to do so. Spending time figuring this out though is surely going to be time well spent. 4. Reinforcing or Reconditioning spending time ignoring progress and instead noticing all of the little problems, hurdles, obstacles and set backs can be a huge challenge to effortless productivity. Instead of putting energies into focusing on the negative, it is important to reinforce progress and recondition yourself to do this. By reinforcing the negatives, you are focusing yourself on the 80 percent that is less important. By instead reinforcing your progress, this makes it impossible to ignore or forget and helps you to move forward more effectively. One way in which to do this is to actually keep a vivid visual presentation of progress beside you. Doing this is kind of like giving yourself a pat on the back for your subconscious mind on a continual basis. When deciding to create this visual presentation, there are some steps to remember. One is that the feedback has to be in your way, so that you cannot just step by it without having to look at it. Some places use wall charts that are also available on their website. By seeing the visual chart of progress one hundred or more times a day, the subconscious mind continually registers your successes and reinforces them in your mind. What this does is that it creates neural pathways or connections that link up the 20 percent of important actions and the actual achievements that you experience on a daily basis. All of this plays an important role in reducing ineffective procrastination and encouraging effective procrastination. For effortless productivity, it is necessary to adopt all of the above keys, and integrate them into your day to day routine. By doing this you will be

enabling your success by helping yourself to become more productive and by focusing on what is really important.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is an important key to effortless productivity and it is helpful to understand it in more depth to be able to put it into action in your day to day life. This is not just in relation to your work, but also with your family, friends, hobbies and other activities that you do during the course of a month. In particular, it can be very hard to decide what you should do, and what to drop or give to someone else to do. In most cases, it is better to keep the 20 percent to yourself to do, because most of the time nobody will do a better job of it than you. Also, it is likely that no one can achieve completion of those tasks more rapidly than you. However, the 80 percent can be delegated. Either that or it can be left to rot. Delegate as much as possible of the 80 percent to others, and leave the rest to go by the wayside. But how is it possible to make that allimportant and business critical decision about what goes into the 20 percent? Actually, that decision is fairly easy to make. All you really need to do is to ask yourself, What will happen if nobody does X? Will I still achieve Y? In this instance, X is the specific action that needs to either be completed or dropped. And Y is the desired end result that you wish to achieve. If you find that you will still achieve your desired end result without doing task X, then X can either be dropped entirely, or in the worst case it can be delegated. There are examples of the 80/20 rule taking effect in all aspects of your life. Below are some examples of 80/20 in operation both in work and outside of work:

Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

Absenteeism in the office, some people take off more time sick than others. Perhaps you know that to be true but you do not really analyze the figures. Well, reviewing those figures could be really important. In many cases, you will actually find that 20% of the people that you hire take 80% of the sick leave in your office. Sick leave and other absenteeism usually costs you money. As a result, it is important to look over the figures, and instead of having a big meeting to address the issue with everyone in the team, focus on weeding this out with the people who actually take the time off sick. Honing in on the culprits could save your business a lot of money. Less effective employees in your work place, you may find that you have some people that are less effective. These are the people that you feel you are constantly having to talk to because they have caused costly mistakes, or they have messed up again, wasting the time of others around them. If you look at the way that you spend your time you will likely find that 80% of time, or thereabouts is spent focusing on 20 percent of your people. And worse than that, those 20 percent of people are the ones that are the least effective. Instead of doing this, it is better to put 80 percent of your people time into the good people. These are the ones who are making your business profitable through their hard work and energy. Get rid of the 20 percent of ineffective folks. They cost you more time than they are worth. Project management often you will find that you spend 80 percent of your time on projects focusing on 20 of the projects problems. Again, this is not a productive way to run a business. It is not the effortless productivity that we all seek. Find a way to spend time on the most

important parts of the project, rather than focusing too much time on the 20 percent of the problems. Where possible, delegate these problems to other people to sort out, and if possible, empower others to find solutions to fix them. Client management just like your dealings with your less effective people, business people often find that they manage clients in the same way. More often than not 80 percent of company time is spent on difficult clients and only 20 percent on the clients that you work with smoothly. It seems like a huge effort to deal with these clients, and that is usually because you are making it such a huge effort by allocating so much time to it. If you look even closer, you may find that the 80 percent of your time being spent on the difficult clients is also time that is not being spent on the most profitable clients. Find ways to address this and move on from difficult client situations. Profit management one of the most important areas to address is how you spend your time in terms of profit management. If you look at your time usage, you will likely deduce that you spend 80 percent of your time on just 20 percent of your companys income. Again, examine what you are doing and reallocate your time accordingly. Delegate where you have to, to ensure that your time and that of your employees is being spent productively and profitably. In other aspects of your life, you can also apply the 80/20 rule to be more effortlessly productive:

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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

Studying for those who are still in school, or who have gone back to study, instead of studying absolutely everything on the syllabus, you should focus on studying what is important to learn. This is usually fairly simple to do, because professors or teachers will usually tell you what is important. All you then need to do is listen, write it down and remember it, and adapt study plans accordingly. Usually you can use this information learned in class to cut down on your studying quite significantly. Also, if there is an aspect of your studies that you do not understand, do not spend a lot of time trying if you just dont get it (unless it is absolutely critical that you understand it). Instead, move on and focus on studying in more depth the areas that you do understand. Friendships in friendships it is necessary to focus on friends where there are two way exchanges. Often times it becomes easy to spend too much time focusing on those friends who are continually needy and have nothing to offer to you in return. These friends can take over your time they can steal time from you. You may end up finding that 80 percent

of your time spent on your friends is with these more negative friends that do not offer you support when the tables are turned. Of course, everyone has hard times, but the important thing is that friends are there for you when you have bad times. If they are not, but they are still taking up a lot of your time, try to weed such friends out of your life. Work life balance in most cases you cannot spend 80 percent of your time at work and 20 percent at home, unless you are a highly successful entrepreneur who has already made your millions. However, in most cases, work life balance can be adjusted so that you are spending your time outside of work relaxing, recuperating and having fun, rather than taking care of inane, mindless tasks. This will make your productivity in the office more effortless, as you will not be tired udio A e e r F NLP when you are at work if n O e s Cour you relax properly re outside of the work lick He C place.
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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

SPRINTS
One of the keys to effortless productivity is to start using sprints to get tasks done. Above, it was suggested to use a five minute rule to get tasks done. In fact you can use the five minute rule to focus on the 20 percent of tasks that you need to be doing. Here is how to do it: Choose the action that you believe is the most important to carry out right now Set a timer to 5 minutes. Work on that task as fast as you can until the bell rings for time up. Stop what you are doing and evaluate your progress. If the task was finished, congratulations. If the task was not completed, decide whether you want to sprint for another 5 minutes or instead leave the task for later Remember: you are way better off at 5 minutes into doing something than never having started it at all. While you are doing your sprints, aim for perfection. Unlike what we have sometimes been taught to think, perfectionism is not a dirty word. If you do not like what you see, instead envisage the way that you would like it to be and sprint for five minutes again to redo it in the way that you would like it, or change it accordingly. If you run out of time at the bell ringing, you need to stop and get some feedback on what you were doing. You may ask, Why do I only get five minutes? What if I need more time? The answer to that is Tough luck. Frankly, you do not need more than five minutes and you do not get more than five minutes. The issue is that work expands out to the

time that you have allowed for it. Unfortunately if you do not have a block of time put aside for an assignment, it will simply fill up all your time. This is how procrastination got its bad reputation. Procrastination is not a bad thing, it is just misused. Sprinting means acting fast. Fast action creates passion about what you do. There is a famous slogan, Just do it! Instead, it is advisable to, Do it faster! That is because anything you want to do can be done faster. One example of this is cold calling prospects. This is a favorite procrastination task of yours, and you do not enjoy it. Instead of spending time thinking about how you do not want to do it, make time to define the following action steps: First, make a list of prospective clients (you have five minutes to do that) Second, make a short introduction and gate keeper assessment calls - again, you only have five minutes to complete your list. This means that you speak faster and this makes you sound more enthusiastic and unique. You also dial faster. Five minutes later you are done with the cold calls. What a relief! Getting used to the five minute rule means that you have to act faster to comply with it. The slower you go, the more hesitant you become, so though it might be hard to start with, in the long run you will be making things easier for yourself. The faster you do the task, the faster that you finish, and doing things faster also makes your brain send commands to produce endorphins. If you ever did a real sprint run youll recall the rush and excitement that chemical has on your body. The bottom line? Fast is good and faster is better. This is a mindset that you need to adopt to make your productivity more effortless.
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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

CREATING SIMPLICITY
As well as sprints, you need to create and foster a spirit of simplicity in your life. It may be hard to know what is simple and what isnt, and how to take something that seems complex and turn it into something simple. For example, and related to the cold calling above, the concept, Making cold calls is not simple. However, the idea of Making five cold calls to five new prospects is a much simpler concept to grasp. It is less off putting and much more likely to be achieved by looking at it that way. Likewise, the idea of Losing ten pounds in weight may seem to be complex and overwhelming. Instead of looking at it that way, you could set yourself a goal of Go up the four floors using the stairs every time I have no packages to carry. This is a simple concept to grasp and less overwhelming. As such, it is more likely to be carried out. Again, the idea Negotiate a pay rise is not simple. Instead you could look at it like this: Ask my supervisor for a brief meeting to discuss my contributions to his team. Or Ask my supervisor to join a meeting with our boss to share his recommendation for a potential raise for me is simple. There are a great many examples of how this can be applied to all aspects of your professional or personal life. For example, Learn French is an overwhelmingly complex idea. Instead, it could be altered to learn

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect. - Harold Ramis
five verbs in French which makes it simpler and more achievable. Likewise, Buy an apartment is a complex task, but Save 500 Euros per month toward a deposit is a simpler idea to grasp. In the work place, Complete the project may be extremely complex, but Complete this task of this project is much easier to achieve because it is simple.

Embrace the simple in your life, to take you a step closer to effortless productivity.

mate i t l u e ty is th on. i c i l p Sim phisticati so i a Vinc D o d r a - Leon

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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

EFFECTIVE AND INEFFECTIVE PROCRASTINATION

Above, the concepts of effective and ineffective procrastination were introduced. It is useful to understand what these mean, so that you can stop procrastinating ineffectively and work on procrastinating in a more effective manner. Ineffective procrastination is what you do when you do not feel like doing what you think you should be doing. It is time spent on dreading the doing X. It is the will power energy that you expend trying to convince yourself to take action. It is also the kick ass approach that you suddenly get when you are running late, or when you are about to be late. At these times, you are so hard on yourself that in your mind your life becomes like a military boot camp in that moment. Ineffective procrastination is the thing that you waste a lot of energy on and it holds you back into the position of underachiever. Effective procrastination is quite different. Effective procrastination is when you choose not to do something because you know that you can. For example, if you want to lose weight, you could use the five minute countdown to wait before you eat a piece of cake. Or you could use the five minute timer before you order yourself a calorie heavy Coca Cola drink. Instead of going ahead and eating the cake or drinking the Coca Cola, remind yourself how it feels when you eat the cake and regret it. Remember that bloated feeling that kicks in, and resist. That may be the same feeling that you get if you wait for five minutes, but in this case the cake is outside of your body. You get the same results but a different ROI. The point of effective procrastination is to delay the actions that push you away from your goals, at least for a little while. There are a great many other tactics that you can take to avoid ineffective procrastination. These include: Seek help if a task seems overwhelming to you, then maybe youre not the right person to do it. Ask for help with it instead. Or better still, as above, delegate it. If it is a work task, you can delegate or ask your boss to give you help to deal with it. If it is a task at home, you can ask a friend, relative or partner to help you out. Look at the problem in a different way instead of having that feeling of dread and focusing on the task as being a monster that has to be slain, try deciding that you can do it. Persuade yourself that you know you can achieve it. With a positive approach you will have a better chance of success. Give yourself a time limit this is not the same as the five minute sprint. This instead means that you should not let a difficult task lie for days on end without tackling it. Instead, set a time by which it must be complete, and make sure to achieve it by that time. That will reduce the dreading of the task. Give yourself a reward if there is a task that you really do not want to do, promise yourself a reward for achieving it. This will usually help the task to get completed much faster.

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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht - Stay Lazy! Yet Get Things Done.

Break the task down into its component parts take a five minute sprint to try reducing the task to a number of small and manageable component tasks that must be completed (each in five minutes). Doing this will make each task seem less overwhelming, will reduce the complexity and make the task simple and achievable. Start with an easy part instead of tackling the most complex part of a job first, start with an easier task. This will build up your confidence so that you are ready to tackle a more complicated part of the job. It will provide some momentum that you can build on to move on to other parts. Schedule the work you can mix up the things that you know that you are not going to enjoy doing among the tasks that you know that you will. This will make the task seem less daunting overall.

Hobbies sometimes you may decide not to take up a hobby or a class because you worry that you will not be able to do it very well. You do this despite the fact that you really want to take up that activity. This is a good example of very ineffective procrastination. Instead of spending time thinking about what you cant do, decide that you can do it. Or at least that you can try and do it. Sign up for classes or join a club for the activity and get doing it. If then you find you cant do it or that you dont enjoy it, you can stop. At least you will know that you have tried, instead of wasting time always wondering. Being a better person sometimes people spend a lot of time wondering about if they are doing the right thing or not. This is also ineffective procrastination and it does not serve a very helpful purpose. We are given the feeling of instinct for a reason. Instead of worrying about what the right thing to do is too much, it will usually be more effective to go with your gut instinct about what is right or wrong in any given situation. Encouraging employees to do better instead of spending time worrying about how to motivate your employees in the work place, you might instead focus a few seconds on saying thank you when they have done a good job. This is almost effortless to achieve and a thank you goes a long way. It is encouraging in itself. It doesnt need a lot of time spent worrying and ineffectively procrastinating about if you are doing the right thing. Making meetings shorter and simpler in addition to holding meetings before lunch or close to the end of the day, another way to avoid ineffective procrastination and time wasting, and make productivity more effortless, is to spend five minutes before the meeting creating an agenda. In the actual meeting stick to the agenda. Be sure to cut people off if they go off topic. It may be hard to do initially, but youll get used to it, and everyone will appreciate it.

Being More Effective And Effortlessly Productive

In different areas of your life there are ways that your procrastination may be ineffective. Here are some examples and ideas of how to recognize it and move forward. Career in your career, time is short. You do not want to waste time being stuck in a job that you do not enjoy. That is ineffective procrastination. While you are spending time in a job that you do not enjoy, you could instead be out there in a job that you love, taking on new challenges and gaining new working experiences that make your resume even better. Instead of staying stuck in a job, know that not doing anything about it is a choice in itself. This is a decision too. And not a very good one. Dont waste any more time update your resume and start looking for another job right now.

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Being a better friend time spent worrying about how you havent got back to this friend or that friend and how you are a bad friend, is once again ineffective procrastination. Instead of doing this, actively put some aside time each day from your personal time to answer your personal emails, or make personal calls to people who need support. It is fairly effortless to put aside 15 minutes each day to respond to people. This will be a better use of time than worrying about what you are not doing. As well as this, your friends will remember this and they will do the same for you when you need it. Being a better partner in relationships, many people spend a lot of time procrastinating in an ineffective manner. They spend time analyzing in their heads about what X or Y gesture will mean for their partner if they do it, and how it will be perceived, and how it might affect the relationship. This is time poorly spent. Instead of doing this, it is again better to trust gut feelings. Life is far too short to be spent procrastinating ineffectively in this manner. Instead of thinking about it, just do it. You might find that your partner was hoping that youd do it anyway. Being a better parent time put aside for worrying about how to be a better parent is not effortless. It is ineffective and does not resolve anything. There is a very simple solution to being a better parent, at least to children who are able to speak already. You just need to listen it is that simple. Many times parents do not do this, but the answer is usually there if they spend a few minutes listening each day. This is an effective use of time, and it is also fairly effortless. It is also productive because it gets to the bottom of problems more quickly, rather than letting them build up and up.

Encouraging children to do better still on the subject of parents and children, often parents will spend lots of time trying to figure out how to encourage their children to do better. In fact this is also ineffective procrastination in disguise. It really is much simpler than doing extensive research. Telling children that they have done well when they have achieved something will encourage them to do better. Also, paying an interest in their schooling is useful. You can simply ask them what they did today, over dinner perhaps, and talk with them about it. This will help them to reinforce what they have learned. It is really very effortless, it does not take that long, and it is highly effective. . Getting better at learning if you struggle with learning by reading technical books, find a better way to learn. If reading doesnt do it for you, find out what does, and do that instead. This may apply to classroom learning, webinars, online learning or any other kind of learning. You will not be being effortlessly productive if you spend time trying to do something that you know does not work very well for you. Instead you will dread doing it, you will procrastinate ineffectively, and you will not achieve your goals.

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Q&A
How can I stop procrastinating ineffectively?
Follow the examples given to try to stop procrastinating ineffectively. If you follow the four keys for effortless productivity, of giving yourself an unrealistically short amount of time to do things, making things simple, focusing on the big things (the 20 percent of tasks that you actually should be working on) and reinforcing your successes, you will usually find that ineffective procrastination starts to slip away. Also, it is important to trust your gut instinct. In most cases you will find that it is right, even if you didnt want to hear what it had to say. Taking action is another way to stop ineffective procrastination. If you take action, you are starting to cut off the source of the ineffective procrastination, the worrying about actually doing something.

How can I decide what to focus on?

Deciding what to focus on is actually relatively simple. You just need to ask yourself if your desired result will be achieved if you do not do this task. If your desired result will not be achieved by dropping a task, then you will need to not drop that task. Of course, just because the task needs doing does not mean that you personally have to do it. If you have employees, maybe they can take on the task for you, especially if it is a task that you are dreading (and ineffectively procrastinating about) but they are actually good at and enjoy.

What if a task really will take longer than five minutes?

If a task really will take longer than five minutes it does not matter. That makes up your next sprints. You will complete short sprints of five minutes until you complete your task. If you find that you are not being very productive in your five minutes put aside for the task, you should put the task aside and come back to it later. Time procrastinating in an ineffective manner will not get your task completed. If you put aside too much time for your task, you will find that you naturally fill that time.

How can I make tasks simpler?

Break tasks down into their component tasks. If a task seems to complicated it is because you are trying to tackle too much of it at once. Look at the overall task and you will see that you can divide it up into many different smaller tasks. These can be completed as sprints. Try adopting the sprint method, and only allowing yourself a very short amount of time to complete a task. If it takes longer than that time, allow another very short spell of time. Come back to it later if it is taking too long. And remember, it is better to be five minutes into a task than to never have started it at all.

If laziness is natural, how can I overcome this?

Laziness is natural and there are good reasons for it. We are lazy so that we preserve our energy for when we most need it. Instead of trying to focus on the stopping of being lazy or the stopping of procrastinating, it is better to spend time being effortlessly productive. This will free up more time for you to be doing the things that you want to be doing, which may be lazy things.

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Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

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