Changing the Paradigm to Flat Out Sprinting

[MikeC]

Alan Lakien's book, "How TO GET CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE," has a couple of great chapters on procrastination and the related "fear."

The gist of all that in GTD language is to start your day with the one NA you dread doing the most. And your life will change!

I think I'll start doing this myownself.

[ArcCaster]

I would like to know how you do. That is a hard way to start your day.

I've been looking for 'magnets' -- NAs that draw me. Maybe I need to mix in a few fearful NAs. But I fear that might slow down my whole day

[Brent]

The gist of all that in GTD language is to start your day with the one NA you dread doing the most. And your life will change!

Tried it. Didn't work for me.

If I don't want to do something, looking at it first thing in the morning doesn't magically make me want to do it. I want to do it less at that time.

This may be partly due to physical issues. I'm a night owl. Mornings are a bad time for me to tackle tough stuff, as I'm still waking up.

[MikeC]

Hmmmm....I'm not sure we are meaning the same thing. Doesn't matter if you aren't attracted or if you don't want to do that yucky NA first. That's the point! Just do it.

One old saying: "eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you the rest of the day" (or Dentist!)

[Brent]

I'm trying to say that I'm less likely to do hard or unpleasant things first thing in the morning.

If I could "just do it," without regard to time, why would I schedule it for a particular time?

[MikeC]

I read this book. There was some pretty good stuff, but my read on the content is that its for the Type A personality. It wasnt so helpful to me because I dont have energy issues, I have not-wanting-to-face-my-NA-list issues. Any good books for that?

Lakien has several suggestions for not wanting to face my NA issues. Simply, one suggestion was to choose the most unattractive, uncomfortable, uninviting, worse NA and do it first. For procrastionators only. And perhaps those don't listen to their intuition. Whatever that is.

I think scheduling this horrible NA to a specific time is okay too. The key is get it done and to reap the rewards of ending your procrastination.

I also believe that if this one horrible NA is lurking on your NA list--and you know it's there--and you know you don't want to see it---you will dread looking at the list as a whole.