Would you procrastinate on doing your taxes if you got a million dollars for doing them right now? Would you procrastinate on anything if it meant your kid or someone else had to suffer a horrible death? Would you procrastinate if you lost a finger for every additional unit (hour, day, whatever) of delay? Probably not. You […]
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The moment I woke up today, I knew exactly what was awaiting me. First, twenty minutes of meditation; then several hours of writing on this very article. I did not feel like doing either of them. In fact, I was dreading it. My mind was producing all kinds of negative thoughts, listing one excuse after another […]
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I’ve been struggling with procrastination all my life. About two years ago, I decided I’ve had enough and started actively working on reducing my procrastination. Since then I’ve read a lot of books and articles on the subject and I’ve tried lots of different tools and tactics. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t. Today, […]
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Any goal you pursue or action you take can be thought about in a number of different ways. Brushing the teeth can be called “moving the brush back and forth across the teeth” or “keeping the teeth clean and healthy”. Exercising can be thought of as “trying to lose weight”, “becoming more fit”, or “running on […]
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About a year ago, I read a great book on mental training called With Winning In Mind by Olympic gold medalist in rifle shooting Lanny Bassham. It was a quick, easy read and it really impressed me. (Check out my summary here.) One thing that I found particularly amazing was a story about one of Lanny’s […]
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“Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated.” Tell your dog to “sit” and when he does so, reward him with a goodie. Do this a couple of times and the dog will quickly learn to sit down when you tell him to “sit”. That’s how behavior works in a very simplistic way; in animals as well as in […]
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Yeah, I think self-compassion matters. This is my third article on the topic, after previously giving an overview of self-compassion and its benefits here and then explaining in detail why self-compassion leads to more motivation and achievement here. Today, I want to keep things shorter and talk about the effects of self-criticism versus self-compassion on procrastination. We’ll […]
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A while ago, I wrote an article on the benefits of self-compassion, in which I listed some of the differences between self-compassion and self-criticism. In short, self-criticism is associated with lots of negative consequences – it’s strongly related to depression and dissatisfaction with life, self-critics are much more likely to attempt suicide than others, and so on […]
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During my high school years, I was massively addicted to an online game called Demigod. I freakin’ loved this game. And I literally played it all the time. There were many days when I played upwards of 14 hours, just taking enough time away from gaming to grab some food and take care of my bodily […]
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I admit it. I used to be a snooze button addict. Every morning my alarm clock would go off and I would hit that damned button at least 2-3 times. Eventually I would manage to crawl out of bed – 20, 30, 60, or even 120 minutes after originally planned – feeling worn out, still tired, […]
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