Procrastination is a huge issue for a lot of people. Working for myself for the past month has exposed my issues with it even though I'm doing what I love. I procrastinate. The day ends. I stress and feel guilty. I go to sleep. And then I do it all over again. There's got to be a better way.

Here are some solutions I'm experimenting with to heal my habit:

• Find a procrastination partner: Identify the person at work or in your life who will randomly email, call, text, or stop by your desk occasionally and ask you "What are you procrastinating on?" or "What's the one thing that would make your day wildly successful if you accomplished it today?" After you respond, their role is to combat all excuses and encourage you to start working on whatever your "one thing" is right then and there. Note: This doesn't work if they start procrastinating with you.
  
  
• Make a distraction detector list: Write your distractions on a post-it or the wall in front of you so that you know when you're being distracted. Some of mine are sorting stray paper, unwashed clothes, the refrigerator, cutting my nails, and Facebook. When you catch yourself about to do either, just stop and refocus on what you're procrastinating on.
  
  
• Set something in motion: Create an early deadline by setting something in motion that involves another person. For example, if you have a project due in a month, set up a feedback session with your colleague or boss around the 2 week mark.

• Find something worse to procrastinate on: I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but if we find a few things to procrastinate on, we end up procrastinating on the thing we don't want to do with the lesser of the two evils. For example, if you need to do your taxes and go to the DMV but you don't want to do either, you're more likely to get the lesser of the two evils done b having two things to procrastinate on than if you only had one thing to procrastinate on.
  

• Shorten the work day: Just like Parkinson's Law, if we have 8 hours to do 4 hours of work, for some silly reason we tend to expand the work to fill the 8 hours. If you know you only get in a good 4-5 hours of real work everyday, don't beat yourself up about the other 3+. Who made up the 8 hours work day anyway? Consciously excel during your peak hours and consciously rest during your non-peak time.You know how to look busy. After all, you've been procrastinating for years now.
  

What's the point of progress?


I just saw Gandhi the movie last weekend at it reminded me of a quote he once said that "There's more to life than increasing its speed." He was more of a Flintstone. When you think about it, as children we were caught between the Flinstones and Jetsons. Somewhere in the middle of the stone age and the future, we had to to make conscious choice about which way we wanted to go. Was it cooler to have a car that you pedaled or a craft that flies? Was it cooler to eat a huge mammoth rib or a small pill that tasted like one? Was it cooler to have a dinosaur named Dino to lick the dishes or a robotic maid named Rosey to handle the dirty work?


So the 21st century is here and it appears that we've chosen the path of the Jetsons - bigger and faster is better. Despite our "progress" as a world, has anything really changed? Are we any better off within as people because of the technologies without? Where the hell are we rushing to or are we rushing to hell?

I've been rushing my whole life. I came out the womb a month early. I finished college a year early. I finished business school 4 years earlier than average. Now it's time to slow down. As a child I ate Flintstones vitamins. Symbolically, I think there are parts of the Flintstone's lifestyle that are healthy. I'm afraid that the world is going nowhere fast and we need to find a healthy balance between the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Our measurements of progress as individuals (ie income, materials) and a planet (ie economy, GDP) need to be reconsidered. More dollar bills don't mean we're build-ing and speed isn't always the best indicator of quality.

The average American who completes college would spend:

9.9 seconds at Work (=work, travel to work, getting ready for work)
5.0 seconds in School (=class, homework, and travel to school)
20.6 seconds Sleeping (=fall asleep to wake up)
24.5 seconds of Other Time (=cooking, eating, recreation, travel, kids, errands, personal email)
60.0 seconds



Keep in mind that though school and work look small in the larger scheme of life, they eat the time of our lives when we are physically and mentally the sharpest and they consume daylight hours when our energy is the highest.

Download my assumptions here: HowWeSpendTime.xls

What's Your Highest Personal Velocity?

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Manage (Your) Time. Make Money.Whoever said “Time is money” has significantly impacted the consciousness of American and world culture for better or for worse. Unfortunately they were wrong...time is not money. Money is just one way to store value created with time. Yes…you can spend, save, invest, and waste both time and money, but you can’t save time for later like money nor can you buy time with money. The richest person in the world can not buy an additional 100 years of life. When it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go (healthcare or no healthcare...Whole Foods or no Whole Foods).

We talk about time and money management without truly knowing what time and money are. How can we manage something we can’t even define? I define money as a mechanism created by us to measure and store our ability to create value. To me, time is a mechanism created by us to measure our ability to condense the space between two events (event #1: where someone/thing is and event #2: where someone/thing wants to be).

In the same way that we pay a premium for airplanes, trains, and cars according to the velocity (distance/time) in which they can condense physical spaces, other people (ie clients) and organizations (ie employers) will pay you for helping them get from point A to point B financially, organizationally, spiritually, mentally, etc. If you are able to powerfully close space between two events (aka your velocity) for yourself, another person, or another entity, you will create value, which you can store for later use as money. Airplanes use the sky. Trains use tracks. And cars use roads. Therefore, in order for us to create and capture the most value we can and get rich (spiritually, financially, etc), we must become aware of where our personal velocity is the highest and stay on that path.

Wikipedia defines the quarterlife crisis as a phase between during one's 20s characterized by insecurity, confusion, frustration, and loneliness. The quarterlife crisis is an earlier version of the dreaded midlife crisis. However, according to NationMaster.com, the life expectancy for women in the US is 80 years and the life expectancy for men is 75, therefore the quarter life is really in the early 20s and midlife is around the 40s instead of 50s.

The problem with the terms quarterlife and midlife is the assumption that we are actually going to live the average amount of years. Nobody thinks that they are average! The reality is that there are 10 year olds that have lived 50% of their life already and will die at the age of 20 and there are a few 25 year olds who have only lived 25% of their lives and will die at the ripe age of 100.

Oftentimes we measure the youth of something by the amount of time that has passed since its birth or inception, but I think that that's a false measurement of youth. During the course of my 25 years on Earth, I've seen two of my teenage mentees make their transition to the afterlife before me. Life is not an assembly line where the person who gets on first gets off first. So what is young?

What if youth was measured by the amount of time one had left on this Earth? The more years you have left on Earth, the younger you are. Because we are healthy and energetic now, most 20-somethings assume that they will live to be old, retire, and have all of the time they want to do what they daydream of doing today. But if nobody knows when their time will come, who is really young?

You may have heard the saying, "Time is money". Well it's not! Time is more valuable than any other resource including money because it can't be saved or bought. Most people invest money in hope of a future return, but since tomorrow is not guaranteed for anyone, time should be invested to maximize the present moment. They say live every day like it's your last while making creating the world you hope to live forever. In other words, don't wait to retire to live. Go bankrupt everyday, because the unique things about time is that it is the only resource that is replenished every morning (except one) free of charge.

Deadlines…Deadlines…Deadlines. Every day there is one more to add to our to do list. Life is more than a series of met deadlines and checked off to do lists. Instead of using the word “deadline”, use “lifeline”.

Do you remember playing the Cruisin’ USA video game when we were younger? In order to keep on racing, you had to reach certain checkpoints within the allotted amount of time. You wanted to get there in time because it would allow you to see new parts of the course that you never saw before. It was like a “lifeline”. In our daily lives, we use word “deadline” a lot. I think it stems from our competitive, fast-paced culture and our belief in Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

Imagine viewing your next assignment like the race game. Instead of seeing it as a sprint to the next checkpoint, think of it as an opportunity to explore uncharted territory in the near future if you excel. Keep in mind that when you excel at something you don’t like, you’ll attract more of what you don’t like. We kill ourselves and stunt our own growth when we willingly accept things without being vocal about our goals, passions, and needs. When you are passionate about the assignment, it becomes a lifeline; there is no such thing as a deadline when you feel alive. There is only one deadline in life that truly matters and it is meaningless if you never truly lived.