A true story...

I always tell myself there's no more perfect day than tomorrow. :p

Some seriously absurd double talk

ha ha, i didn't even catch it (despite the smileys) until you pointed it out....


I read something that works 100% of the time for me. Whenever you do something, whatever it is you're doing, start off by going crazy at it for the first 5 minutes... Even if you have to tell yourself, I'll just work on this for 5 minutes and then I'm done.

Those first 5 minutes should set the pace for the rest of your rime working on it. At the end of the day, leave something you'll jump on for the first five minutes next time around, so that you don't have to look for things to do the next day.

Try it, you'll be amazed.

Hi Jennifer,

Very funny opening line -

I have messed a lot of things up over the years and missed some golden opportunities due to my inclination to procrastinate.

I've been using the methods taught by the 5 bucks a day guy. (You've probably heard about his stuff, if not a Google search will take you to what he has to offer.)

Without going into his entire method, I know how much I ultimately want to earn and keep that as my goal.

I keep a list of every potential project that could make me a few bucks a day (hopefully long term.)

I dedicate each day of an entire week, sometimes two or three, to working only on that project. The list will always be there and I can find something new and exciting when the current project is done. But until I've completed a project I simply don't move on to something new.

I allocate time to learn each day, but I try not to spend more than 1/2 hour to reading information or surfing around. I've spent too many 8 hour marathons reading reports, eBooks, sales letters, etc.. and telling myself that I was working on my business. I wasn't, I was wasting time that should have been spent focused on a project and doing actual work.

That's all I got. I'm still a procrastinator (I think it's in my DNA), but I do stay focused and get results by using this method to keep myself on track.

This seems like a great plan, but what happens when you fall into the "I've been doing this for months with nothing to show!" trend?
My suggestion would be to work on one of your 5 websites until it is set up, has content, and is getting at least a little traffic. Then you could move to your second, then third, etc...
Once you have all 5 of them set up, you could do a daily rotation for updating them and doing extra SEO and traffic promotion.
Another problem this could solve is 'If what you do with one website doesn't work, it may not work with the other 4 either'. You don't want to copy a failing website a bunch of times. Just my thoughts.

Hi Jennifer,

I saw an ad in a magazine once for Nike running shoes. It showed a woman sitting on the edge of her bed with her shoes on the floor next to her feet and a thoughtful look on her face. The caption read something to the effect of:

"If you'd started jogging at the time you began thinking about jogging, you'd be done already."

Your initial post made me think of that.

Seriously though, what I did was I went out and got a dry-erase board and stuck it on the wall next to my desk. On it is all the tasks I need to complete, with deadlines. The tasks are outlined with the steps required to complete the task, in order.

While this hasn't been 1000000% effective in curing my procrastination habit, it does feel pretty damn good to erase those tasks one by one as they're finished.

I have the magic formula for curing procrastination, I learned it from Tony Robbins.

When you associate PAIN to taking action in the short term, and PLEASURE to inaction, you will always tend to procrastinate.

As human beings we try to move away from pain, and towards pleasure.

And we usually place more emphasis on short term pain and pleasure.

You need to DESTROY these two associations...

Short term inaction = PLEASURE
Short term action = PAIN

If you can reverse these two to this...

Short term inaction = PAIN
Short term action = PLEASURE

...you will stop procrastinating.

One thing you could do is set up an alarm to go off every 30 minutes, if you are procrastinating when it goes off then you have to create a pain association, for example 10 push ups or something uncomfortable.

If after the alarm goes off you are taking action, you need to create a pleasure association - reward yourself by listening to some music etc.

If you keep doing this, eventually you'll associate pain to procrastinating, and pleasure to taking action.

The small amount of will power you do have, you use to enforce your punishment/reward after each 30 minutes, depending on whether you are taking action or not.

Every other method/tactic/strategy I've tried has failed miserably. I don't believe it can be done any other way, other than forced accountability which is difficult to set up, and usually unrealistic.

Nothing else will work long term, simply because we can't change our human nature - if we associate pleasure to procrastination and pain to short term action, we will eventually revert back to what is pleasurable.

So this must be resolved.

Jennifer, I'm sending you a graphics related PM.

Giles, the Crew Chief