The hardest habits to change, by far, are the ones people can’t seem to control.
Procrastination, the habit of putting tasks off to the last possible minute, can be a major problem in both your career and your personal life. Side effects include missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, stress, feeling overwhelmed, resentment and guilt.
We all procrastinate. I put off writing this article by doing a bunch of smaller tasks, for example. They were less important and I knew it, but they were quick tasks and so easier than writing an article on a tough topic.
But when a task is presented as fun, researchers report in a new study, the same individuals often do worse than those who are less motivated to achieve.
Impulse and determination: Those two are probably the most important keywords of my life.
Creativity is often made out to be a nebulous, messy, complicated, difficult thing, and it can be. But it doesn't have to be.
Do you ever have one of those days when you just can’t seem to find focus?
I've been a professional writer since I was 17, so nearly 24 years now. I’ve made my living with words, and have written a lot of them -- more than 10 million.
It's a huge limiting belief to assume that going faster means you’re doing something wrong and creating too much stress.
You know what it's like: No focus, lots of stress, lots of mental exhaustion without really getting anything done.
I couldn't motivate myself to do anything important this morning, which is a rare thing for me. I started to doubt myself, and wonder whether anything I do is worthwhile.
We all have days when we’re just not very inspired, when we need passion and creativity breathed into us.
Trying to resist that late-night tweet or checking your work email again?
Timeboxing is a simple time management technique you can use to take control of your time.
Some lessons that apply equally to getting buff and to building your business
This checklist by Dr María Machón includes typical triggers for procrastination, along with possible solutions for each trigger.
Following this method, you can process your inbox in less than 5 minutes if you’re quick.
Excuses are lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths. But as long as we buy into those excuses, we can never move past them.
Procrastination is in all of us, and one of the best ways to procrastinate is to do all the busy-work that makes us feel like we’re doing stuff -- while not doing the stuff we know we should be doing.
If you have ever wanted to know how to turn a content site into a virtual gold mine, you'd be smart to ask an expert how he or she managed it.
If you don’t know how, learn how. Use that fancy brain that learned how to walk, talk, and read. It’s still capable of further learning, is it not? Of course it is!
There are a lot of people who read self-improvement blogs and books, but never put them into action. Are you one?
Starting a business is a lot of work. Anyone who tells you it's not is either lying or has never actually started one themselves.
A big part of self-discipline comes from social pressure. This is how people in the military can become very disciplined, particularly in special forces. They don’t want to hold their team back, so they have to do their best.
How much of your day is spent doing administrative tasks, and not creating or doing other important work?
Life would be grand if we only did what our fleeting hearts wanted to do, each moment of the day. Unfortunately, the laundry, taxes and difficult conversations would never get done.
Life's greatest tragedy consists of men and women who earnestly try, and fail! The tragedy lies in the overwhelmingly large majority of people who fail, as compared to the few who succeed.
When a problem is large or complex and the optimal solution is unclear, here's how to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path.
The problem isn't capturing our creativity, as individual inspiration is a steady pulse that beats within us all. The problem is keeping those embers hot once we have them in our grasp.
Unconscious motivation plays a substantial role in how we respond to challenges. Find out how much.