Ready? Got some?

If you now do have some New Year resolutions, then you are probably already failing. Or know that you will eventually probably fail. In the end, most people do. I know I fail. What’s worse, we are, in fact, sabotaging our resolutions and we don’t even know it.

Whether you appreciate my twisted sense of humor or not, you might ask: How can I be already failing and sabotaging my resolutions if I have only set them a minute ago? Well, good question.

Ladies and gentleman, prepare to be shocked, but…

It’s not about putting the effort into your resolutions!

Wait a minute! If it’s not about putting the effort into your resolutions, then what is it all about?

Well, here comes the $64,000 answer:

It is about making sure that you will keep putting the effort into your resolutions.

Big difference.

In my experience, I am either making damn sure that I will keep putting effort into my main goals, or I am inevitably failing – it’s just a matter of time, really. It works the other way around too though – done properly, the success can be inevitable.

Don’t let the fate of your resolutions be doomed before you equip them with the right weaponry necessary to succeed in the Age of Distraction. Oh look, a butterfly! It’s so pretty! It’s flying onto twitter! No, it’s Facebook. No wait, it’s reddit! (… 3 hours later…) What was I talking about? Oh, right. Distractions. They are getting worse every year. Are you getting better at making sure they don’t control your life? I will show you how I personally do this nearly Sisyphean task.

But first, I will have to disagree with Mr. Albert Einstein. Just for fun. Because that’s the way I roll. Actually, not for fun, I’m trying to make a point here. Seriously now – I believe it was this particular gentleman who said:

“Compound interest is the greatest invention in human history”.

Hear hear, but how about compound effort? Now we are talking!

Compound effort

There are two main ways of making sure that you finish something: Using someone else to make sure that you will keep putting effort into it (the Mad Klingon way), or making sure you will keep putting effort in yourself. I’m going to talk about the latter, as it is much more powerful and flexible, and can be combined with the first way anyway.

No working complex system that exists was built at once. All such systems gradually evolved. It is the same with non-trivial goals (or resolutions). The only way to ensure that you will fulfill your goals is to keep putting in effort over time and not stop doing that.

However, even if you use tricks to fool yourself into working, there is no guarantee you will keep doing that consistently. Year is a long time, and there are a lot of butterflies flying around, if you catch my drift.

How I don’t sabotage myself

I don’t know what the perfect solution is for you, but after many years of trial-and-error, I’ve finally discovered mine. Some credit is to Sebastian Marshall who has written about time tracking on his blog extensively. However, what I do is not really time tracking. I’ve crafted the following technique for my purposes.

This is what I do –

After I am done for the day, I print a checklist template for the next day and fill my 3 main objectives for the next day into it. Then I go happily to sleep. (Added bonus: As I fall asleep, my sub-consciousness is already working on these 3 objectives.) After I wake up, I check things off the checklist as the day progresses, either marking that I’ve done them or not. Loop this for 365 days in a row.

Timeless truth: What gets measured gets done.

What to put on the checklist depends on your goals. You should start simple. The essence of what I have there is roughly this:

• Y / N    Get up before 8 AM
• Y / N    Stretch after waking up
• Y / N    Drink water after stretching
• Y / N    Work on 1 main goal first thing on my PC, even before email or starting the browser or IM (5 min is enough)
• Y / N    Work on 3 main goals (specific tasks were chosen yesterday):
  • _________________________________________________
  • _________________________________________________
  • _________________________________________________
• Y / N    Work on blog post or article (5 min is enough)
• Y / N    Prepare checklist for the next day and write the main goals into it
• Y / N    Send a report of what I’ve accomplished today to my friend
• Y / N    Go to bed before 11 PM

My real checklist is like 4 times longer, because I want to keep track of at least 15 different areas/projects. I have no intentions of working on all of them on any particular day, but just having them as suggestions on my checklist, which always lies beside my computer, is extremely powerful. I maintain the template in my own Windows software Swift To-Do List as I like pretty print-outs, but you can use almost about anything – even notepad will do.

At first, it might seem a lot of hassle and paper, but the effort is absurdly low for the enormous benefits. I also file the old checklists into a binder. I simply can’t miss a day, there is no excuse. If, God forbid, something like that were to happen, I would print 2 checklists and fill in the missing info.

If you have daily checklist, the only way you can fail is not to fill the checklist. Even if you don’t do anything else and just fill the checklist, the day is a success.

Why it must be printed? First, I don’t want to begin my morning routine on the computer. I would much rather stretch, drink some water, and review the checklist first. Second, I want to be able to end the day with the computer turned off. Plus it’s more fun and you can’t overlook the paper. That white paper sheet is just glowing there. (Unless, of course, you have a pile of trash on your desk. In that case I can’t help you; I guess you should just burn the desk down and go home.)

For me, it is actually easier to work on my main goals every single freaking day, instead of just 3 days in a week or now and then or some other complex or random pattern – that just never works for me. I like it simple and consistent.

Endless power

Just imagine the raw sheer power of my daily checklist. Whatever I put into it, I’m 100% sure I will think about it, every day, for a year. And I will actually usually do it too, on most days.

I’m sure you can relate to this: If you are working on an internet project or have a business, you are juggling 7253 balls (or so). Sometimes, you forget that some of the balls are even there and let them silently drop on the ground. And sometimes you notice some of these balls got dropped and you feel bad about not juggling them for so long. Solution? Daily checklist.

What I am describing here is the most powerful productivity technique I’ve ever encountered in my life. I already have a lot of experience both with other methods and this one. For example, 2 years ago, I’ve used this technique for my personal life (habits, exercise, diet, not going insane) and stuff like that. And I’ve actually really filled over 340 check list in a row, not missing a day, before stopping. The effects have sunk in and the habit changes are permanent. I’ve also learned quite a lot about myself. My life is better forever.

Believe me – it’s not that important to work on your goals every day. What is important is to make sure that you will keep working on your goals and that you won’t forget about them.

Press “F5” in your brain to refresh your goals

… and push them back up in the endless list of thoughts, where everything quickly falls down and drops out of view. And do it often.

I personally fanatically adhere to the checklist routine – as long as I am printing and filling my daily checklist, the year can’t be bad. It’s just not possible. This ensures I will keep putting effort into my main annual goals.

I don’t care how you do this, but do it! Tattoo it on your forehead, carve it out of dead pixels into your screen, rearrange the keys on your keyboard so they read like the name of your goal, if you must. But do it!

However, there are certainly other ways of making sure you won’t forget about your goals and eventually finish them – please leave a comment: What has worked for you? What do you think could work for you?

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Seriously, Stop Sabotaging Your 2023 Goals is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

It’s the most powerful habit there is.

It’s the only habit you need.

So what is it?

It’s the habit of tracking your habits. The Meta-Habit™.

With this ultimate habit, you can easily start or stop any other habit. And it’s fun! Best of all, if you stick with it, your success is guaranteed.

It’s quite simple, really:

1. Create a spreadsheet for tracking all your habits daily
2. Put each habit into a separate column
3. Each row in the spreadsheet represents a calendar day, so put dates in the first column
4. Every day, fill the spreadsheet, indicating if you have done a habit or not

Now there’s more to it, but that’s it in the nutshell!

You can print the spreadsheet and use colored markers (green = performed the habit, red = not performed the habit), or use electronic spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, or a spreadsheet in Swift To-Do List.)

Here’s how a quick-and-dirty version looks done on paper:

As long as you keep filling the Meta-Habit™ spreadsheet every day, you will eventually succeed and start doing the habits. Even if you actually don’t perform any of the habits, if you’ve filled the sheet, the day is a success. Because eventually, you will start doing the habits consistently. It’s just a matter of time.

In the Meta Productivity video training, I go into a great detail of the Meta-Habit™ method. The Meta-Habit™ is the second module of 5 total.

It’s one of my favorite techniques, and perhaps the most powerful one when it comes to changing your life and creating success.

Money, career, family, relationships, health, education, happiness… you can improve ANY area of your life with the right habits, and Meta-Habit™ is the best way make yourself actually do them!

Feeling inspired? Go get the Meta Productivity training, it’s completely risk free for you! You are 100% protected by our 90-Day Unconditional Money-Back Guarantee: If you won’t love it and it won’t change your life, you will get all your money back, no hassles, no questions asked!

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This one simple habit will help you get everything done is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

If you purchase Meta Productivity now, you will get the video version completely FREE. You will also get an audio-book and e-book version – all for a single price.

Meta Productivity is a revolutionary training that will help you to:

• Dramatically increase your productivity
• Stop procrastinating
• Master your habits

You will get more done in less time, have more energy, and achieve success faster.

Watching video is much easier and more fun than reading a book. Video makes it easier for you to focus on the training. Permanently increasing your productivity has never been easier.

Peter Drucker said: “For the first time in human history, we will have to take responsibility for managing ourselves”. That’s why it’s critical to learn how to be productive.

Click here to learn more about Meta Productivity, or to purchase it!

Meta Productivity comes with 90-day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee – it will change your life, or you will promptly get your money back, no questions asked.

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Double your productivity, stop procrastinating and master your habits with new video training is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

This book will change the way you look at productivity forever.

You will dramatically increase your productivity, master your habits and kill your procrastination.

I’ve worked on this book for over 3 years. I’ve applied everything I’ve learned over the past 10 years about productivity, and condensed it all into proven, simple & powerful systems that anyone can start using immediately, with the least effort possible.

The book turned out really well, and I’m super excited about it. It can truly enrich and inspire you.

I’ve organized this training into 5 short e-books (modules) – each has about 20-40 pages.

In module #1, “The Secrets of New Productivity“, I list 7 common productivity problems (that no one talks about) and how you can overcome them.

These include lack of willpower and self-discipline, perfectionism, the fact that your to-do list is infinite, decision paralysis (being overwhelmed), to-do list guilt, and more.

You will also learn why “meta productivity” beats “productivity”: When you try to be productive, you burn your willpower on a particular task. So it’s not really sustainable. But when you are meta productive, you use your willpower and mental energy to make yourself more productive permanently.

In module #2, “The Meta-Habit™”, I share the most powerful method for taking control of your life and time I know of.

Habits are actions with huge ROI (return on investment). Just a single habit that helps you to be more productive, healthy, energetic or joyful can pay you huge dividends for the rest of your life.
And what’s the best way to take control of all your habits? With a habit!

The Meta-Habit™ is a method of managing habits. It’s super easy – it takes just about 2 minutes per day, and yet, it will help you to successfully start new habits or break existing negative ones.

In module #3, “The Productiveness Framework™”, I share the ultimate method for dramatically increasing your productivity.

The Productiveness Framework™ is a set of 5 principles that you can organize your day around. One of them is a simple yet brutally effective method for getting a lot of real, important work done every day.

You can expect to increase your productivity by 50-100% just by implementing the tools from this module alone.

Then there’s module #4, “33 Golden Nuggets of Productivity Wisdom”.

The idea behind this module is to make you a wise productivity genius.

This module will increase your awareness of productivity, give you new powerful perspectives and deep insights that will, in the long run, result in more success in your work and life.

This module is super-fun to read. It’s a collection of the best and most valuable information on productivity I know of.

Finally, there’s the bonus module #5, “7 Productivity Power Tools”.

In this final module, you will get additional proven tools that you can use to increase your productivity even more.

Click here to learn more about Meta Productivity. Or click here to purchase it ($99.95)..

Meta Productivity is delivered to you instantly, in 3 formats (PDF, ePub and Kindle).

Meta Productivity comes with Unconditional 90-day Money Back Guarantee: If you won’t be amazingly happy with it and the positive impact it has on your productivity and life, we will give you a full refund.

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Meta Productivity released! “Dramatically Increase Your Productivity” is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

People love starting new projects, businesses and ideas.

So they start building something and make rapid progress – they build and build, and they end up building a 1 foot tall “house”. But then something happens. They jump to something else. So they end up with a bunch of 1 foot tall houses. Dozens, hundreds of them.

(Yep, there are tiny 100 houses in the picture. In reality, it would look even worse, because the houses would probably have no roofs or doors.)

Here’s the deal -

You need to build a skyscraper, not a bunch of broken, unimpressive tiny houses.

If you want significant results, impact and success, you need to keep working on that one thing and keep building upon it for years.

Don’t get me wrong – I am all for the “Lean Startup” philosophy of quick-and-dirty rapid prototypes, minimum viable products, etc.

However, once you find something that has legs, then for crying out loud, as long as you are making progress, keep working on it! For years.

We’ve started our software business 9 years ago from scratch. And I’m SO glad that we’ve never stopped working on it. It’s a nice small skyscraper now. Of course, inside the business, we have built and discarded a few tiny houses (projects with no legs). But once we released Swift To-Do List and our customers loved it, we never stopped working on it and made it our #1 priority.

Today, we have fantastic product, fantastic internal systems, fantastic information resources for our customers and website, and fantastic people on our team. All it took was 9 years of hard work and never-ending improvement.

Here’s my question to you -

Can you stick to something for 30 minutes?

An hour…? A day…? A week…? A month even?

Yes? Can you? Maybe you can.

Well, how about for 5 years?

Have you even considered it?

Instead of building yet another tiny house with no roof and door, build another floor for your new skyscraper.

Focus on your best project or idea, and as long as you are making progress, never stop working on it.

The world will love and reward you for it.

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So, do you want to build 100 tiny houses, or 1 skyscraper? is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Almost everybody uses a to-do list, too. (At least occasionally, if not regularly).

But almost none asks: “Hey, how should I actually use a to-do list?”

I think that might be a big mistake.

There are intelligent ways of using to-do lists, and not-so-smart ways.

By using a to-do list the right way, you can eliminate forgetting, stress, overwhelm, procrastination. In fact, you can increase your productivity and efficiency. Tremendously. You can feel like you are in control.

On the other hand, by using to-do lists in not-so-smart-way, you can achieve the exact opposite.

More stress, anyone?

Today, we are going to learn how to use a to-do list intelligently. It’s dirt-simple, and once you implement it, it feels just great.

How to use a to-do list in an intelligent way

Using a to-do list intelligently is deceitfully simple.

This is what you need to do:

1. Create the to-do list and do the initial dump, placing all your “stuff” into it. This clears your mind.
2. (continuously): Look at your to-do list, see what’s next, work on it.
     » Whenever you get interrupted or distracted, repeat.
     » Whenever you finish a task, repeat.
3. (continuously): Whenever a new idea or task comes to you, write it down immediately into your to-do list, then proceed with what you were doing before.

That’s all.

It is ridiculously simple, isn’t it?

And yet, very few people have actually really mastered this.

If you look at the instructions, they simply say to create a to-list list with all your current stuff, look at it often (whenever you get interrupted, distracted, or finish something), and always write new stuff into it immediately when it comes to you.

These simple habits can change your life.

Since these are habits, it takes time to fully establish them. But once you ingrain them, you will do them automatically.

Do this for 2-3 weeks, and you will be doing it automatically, without even having to think about it.

At any point, you either want to be working on a task, looking what to do next, writing down/organizing your stuff, or truly relaxing.

This might be the best well-kept hidden secret of productivity.

With these habits, it’s easy. But without these habits you will spend most of your time in a gray-zone, not really doing anything. Since you’ve read this far, I bet you don’t want that.

How could you start using this intelligent to-do list approach today?

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Using to-do lists efficiently is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

You set a goal, or take on a new project. You are excited! But soon you discover that your progress is, frankly, a joke. If you are getting closer to achieving your goal or finishing your project at all, your progress is SO-DAMN-SLOW than it COULD have been! You know it, but you just CAN’T get yourself to take the right actions necessary for success.

You are both the grand visionary and architect of your life, and your worst enemy that sabotages your dreams.

Why is that?

You have two brains: A rational brain and a caveman brain (also known as “reptile” brain).

The rational brain wants you to achieve that goal or project.

Caveman brain wants you to pig out, watch TV, play games, surf the web, read news and lay around.

The bad news is that until you learn to co-operate with your caveman brain, you will never be successful. It will sabotage your best efforts when you set goals, it will slow your progress when working on an important project, and when you want to diet – oh Lord – it will stuff your face with asinine amounts of food with 150% of jolly-saturated fat.

The good news is that the rational brain is much smarter than the caveman brain. Better yet, I will show you exactly how you can outsmart the caveman brain and succeed.

It’s all about stacking the deck in your favor. Here, let me show you what I mean:

Before Stacking the Deck for Success

After Stacking the Deck for Success

When it comes to achieving your dreams and goals, this might be the most important thing you will ever learn. If you have trouble with focusing, I urge you to close everything else to make sure you finish this – because this can change your life.

I’ve discovered lot of these concepts by studying behavioral psychology and the science of success, yet I kept only what has worked for me personally and ruthlessly eliminated everything else. It took me over 8 years of experimenting to figure out this stuff. It’s tested and it works. It will work for you, too.

And by the way, the caveman brain is not always our enemy. We need the caveman brain. Not just to pig out, but to survive in dangerous situations, avoid accidents, and dodge huge boulders rolling on us in narrow corridors.

The problem: You know WHAT, you know HOW, but you don’t know HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF DO IT.

You know exactly how to accomplish your goal, because you know the actions to take to accomplish your goal. That’s not the problem! After all, knowing this is rather easy: It doesn’t matter how epic or big your project is, you can just break it down into smaller tasks. A few hours of thinking/writing, tops, and you have a very detailed action plan.

Even if you don’t know all of the action steps, you surely know the first few steps that will move you closer to success; and by taking these steps, you will quickly discover the rest of the steps.

So you already know everything you need to do now, but you don’t know how to make yourself do it. The problem is entirely in the execution.

What is NOT the solution

• You don’t need to rely on motivation. Don’t make the same mistake as I once did and focus just on motivating yourself. It is far better to focus on taking action! Once I stopped worrying about motivating myself and focused on taking massive action instead, my productivity went supernova. When you start taking action successfully, motivation will always come as a result. Just make sure that your goal is something that YOU really want.
• You don’t need to rely on willpower. There is a body of conflicting research on whether willpower is a limited resource or not, but for our purposes, it doesn’t matter! By stacking the deck in your favor, you won’t need to rely on willpower. Betting on willpower is unreliable. You need the willpower just for stacking the deck – and that doesn’t require that much of it.

What IS the solution

• You need to outsmart yourself to make yourself do it.
• You need to discover and fix your Failure Patterns.
• You need to stack the deck in your favor.
• You need to take massive action. Once the deck is stacked in your favor, it will be a breeze. Heck, the caveman brain will enjoy himself by actually helping your rational brain!

Two Behavior Patterns

Every time you say to yourself that you will do something (“Intention for action”), one of the following will happen:

The Success Pattern:

• Intention for action=> Action => Success!

The Failure Pattern:

• Intention for action => Caveman brain feels threatened or has a “better” idea => Different action => Failure!

Perhaps the “different action” was pleasant, but the end result is that you feel like crap for failing – again.

What you must do is to fix the behavioral Failure Patterns in your life and transform them into Success Patterns, one pattern at a time.

That way, the rational brain will be at the helm. You will finally be in control.

How do you fix the Failure Patterns? There are several ways. The optimal way depends on the particular pattern and situation.

Let me give you an example from my own life.

Example of Fixing Failure Pattern in My Life: Waking Up Early

I wanted to become an early riser, and get up at 7 AM or sooner. I was already waking up early, but every time I woke up, I looked at the clock, and if it was “too early” (e.g. anything before 8 AM), I wanted to sleep some more. So I did. Mind you, I was not really tired. It was just “too early” for my caveman brain. Sleeping some more actually made me tired. Long story short, I continued to get up at 9 AM or so. Not cool.

But once I realized what is going on, I was able to instantly fix this Failure Pattern:

1. Goal: Get up at 7 AM or sooner each day.
2. Actions necessary: First, make sure I wake up before 7 AM, either by going to sleep soon enough, or by setting an alarm clock. Second, get up immediately after waking up.
3. The Failure Pattern: I wake up at 6 AM => the caveman brain sees the clock, feels threatened, and wants me to sleep some more => I sleep some more => I get up at 9 AM, feeling tired.
4. The solution: Before going to bed, I turn the digital clock to face the wall so I can’t see it.
5. The new Success Pattern: I Wake Up => I can’t see the clock, but because I feel well rested, the caveman brain doesn’t feel threatened and assumes I have slept enough => I get up. It’s 6 AM and I feel great!
6. Stacking the deck in my favor even more: I don’t eat after 7 PM, so I need less sleep. I make sure the blinds are up when I go to bed, so there is natural light in the morning. I make sure I am warm in the morning. After getting up, I immediately open the window, breathe deeply and look into the light to energize myself. Then, I jump on my mini-rebounder for 5 minutes while thinking about my goals and getting energized and excited about the new day.

The solution, in my case, was to break the Failure Pattern by eliminating the source of undesired behavior. Seeing the early time on the clock was a trigger for caveman brain to take over and make me sleep in. It was a perfect excuse. Eliminating the clock eliminated the trigger for undesired behavior.

Then, I stacked the deck in my favor even more, to absolutely conquer this goal. There is no chance of me sleeping late now. I LOVE GETTING UP EARLY! The excitement and energy feels great to the caveman brain too – remember, the caveman brain is all about positive emotions and good feelings. This is the co-operation you should aim for.

Life-hack tip: While jumping on the rebounder in the morning, or while walking to the office, I often listen to my own custom “motivational” tape (in mp3) that I got produced professionally for $5 dollars. It reminds me about my goals and floods me with positive emotions for the day. It invokes tremendous enthusiasm and desire for action in me. I will talk about getting your own completely custom motivational tape for $5 in a blog post that is coming soon. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe: G+, Facebook, twitter.

How To Turn Your Failure Patterns into Success Patterns

By seeing my example, you might already have some ideas of how to fix the Failure Patterns. Let’s look at it -

First, you need to be intelligent and observant enough to discover and understand your own Failure Patterns. That might be a bit tricky, as these patterns are often unconscious, but now that you know what to look for, you can do it.

Second, you need to be creative in breaking your Failure Patterns and transforming them into Success Patterns. This is the fun part!

Third, you need to stack the deck in your favor some more, to make the success inevitable. This is fun, too!

Where to look for Failure Patterns? Whenever you want to do something, but end up not doing it, or doing it late, or doing it badly, look for Failure Pattern. Whenever you wonder where the time went by and how you ended up not doing anything again, look for Failure Pattern.

So the whole process looks something like this:

1. Pick a goal that you really want.
2. Make a quick action plan so you know the steps to achieve your goal.
3. Start with the first step immediately.
4. Take massive action and observe what’s going on – both in your thoughts and behavior.
5. Discover Failure Patterns.
6. Once discovered, break the Failure Patterns. Stack the deck in your favor as much as possible to transform them into Success Patterns.
7. Go back to 4, repeat until the goal is achieved.

How to Stack the Deck in Your Favor for Inevitable Success

The easiest and most powerful way of eliminating Failure Patterns is by changing the environment. Changing the environment is by far the easiest way how you can stack the deck in your favor. It’s easy, because caveman brain doesn’t feel threatened when you change the environment, so it won’t sabotage the changes. That is your leverage.

Remember, the caveman brain will always choose the easy path. And as shown in the images at the beginning of this post, we can exploit that!

Changing the environment is just one possibility. Your situation is unique. You need to discover strategies that will work best for you. Before you cry out “Lame!” – here is a BUNCH of ideas to get you started. This is what I would do (or already do).

A) Make it harder to do the wrong thing

1. Watch too much TV? Turn the TV around to face the wall. Unplug it. Or just give it away!
2. Spend too much time on some website? Block it. Better yet, redirect that website to your own HTML file with list of your goals and the next action you need to take now. You can easily create this in any word processor.
3. Eat too much junk food? Throw away all junk food and make a COMMITED DECISION that you won’t buy it again. Also make a decision that you won’t shop when hungry. If you fail and shop when hungry, don’t buy the junk food! If you fail and do buy it, throw it in the thrash on your way home [I actually did that once]. If you fail in that too, throw it in the trash later at home. If you fail in that too, then just don’t eat it. Now you have to fail FIVE times in a row to do the wrong thing. Before, all you had to do was to fail ONCE and eat it.
4. Check email too often? Make your email client forget the password so it forces you to manually retype it every time. Move the shortcut for the mail client into some obscure location.
5. Play too much PC games? Uninstall the games. Sell the DVDs. Cancel your accounts. [I once sold my account in a MMORPG game for a laughable amount, and it was one of the best things I've ever done. Since then, I never played any MMORPG again.] Too hardcore? Then at least use some parental control software on yourself to limit the time when you can play the games or play casino games at kasinotilmankierratysta.fi. Then – and I don’t care what it takes – substitute the game playing with taking action towards your goals! If you love games, in what ways could you gamificate your life?
6. Procrastinate too much? Write baby-steps for your top action. Work just 5 seconds on the first micro baby-step if you must. BUT TAKE ACTION! RIGHT NOW! It’s ridiculous not to take a 5 second action! How hard is to procrastinate on that? Very. Clean your plate so there is nothing else you can do. Die of boredom or do that 5 second action.
7. Sleep in instead of waking up early? Setup 3-5 different alarm clocks. Tell your lover to kick you out of the bed and take your blanket in the morning. (Hey, I told you this is fun!)
8. Always forget that you want to do something important for you in the morning? Close your laptop and turn it upside down, so the next day, you remember: “A-ha, I wanna do that thing first!” Or, place a chair in your way from the bedroom. Break the Failure Pattern by any means necessary!
9. Eat at night? I would suggest locking the fridge, but most fridges can’t be easily locked, and turning the fridge around is not very convenient either – but it would certainly interrupt the eating pattern :-) Maybe a frakking scary boogeyman in the fridge with a loud car horn would do the trick for you!

B) Make it easier to do the right thing

This is mainly about removing obstacles and adding as much convenience as possible.

1. Want to run each morning? Prepare your running gear before going to bed, so you see it immediately after waking up and can put it right on. Then go for a walk to enjoy the crisp morning air [caveman brain won't protest – after all, it feels good!]. Then run.
2. Want to go to the gym regularly? Hire a personal trainer. You won’t be overwhelmed when you arrive at the gym and see 1000 machines. The personal trainer will tell you exactly what to do and how. He will adjust the machines and weight. (Personal trainer has many other benefits too – for one, you will know you are doing the exercises right.)
3. Want to finish your project? Schedule a time just for your project in which you can’t be interrupted. Create an action plan with all the steps for finishing your project, so you always know the next step. Make sure that you always know the next step. Write it on paper and place beside your computer.
4. Want to eat light before going to bed? Make sure you always have an early satiating dinner – so you are not hungry later. Make sure you are not bored in the late evening, but fully engaged in something exciting.

C) Make it painful to do the wrong thing

You can also make it so that if you do the wrong thing, it will have painful consequences.

For example, as I described in Achieving goals like a Mad Klingon, you can promise your best buddy that you will give him $1000 if you won’t do X. Talk about leverage!

As far as your caveman brain is concerned, it will be more painful to part with $1000 than to do the action X. After all, do you have any idea how many bacon flavored marshmallows you could buy for $1000?!

D) Eliminate distractions

Being the spontaneous dude he is, the caveman brain loves distractions, So… make sure there aren’t any!

Why are distractions so horrible? Here is a hint:

• Intent for action => Distraction => Entirely different action => Failure!

Distraction equals destruction. Distractions are pure poison. They rob you of your life and potential.

Declare full scale war on distractions. Show no mercy.

Simplify and unclutter your workspace.

Simplify and unclutter your computer desktop – and for crying out loud, disable all notifications!

E) Eliminate commitments to irrelevant projects and people

You can do few things right or many things badly.

Clean your plate. Unburden your load.

Drop as much irrelevant commitments as possible. Decide that you will NOT do.

Commitments that are not aligned with your goals are nothing but distraction factories.

F) Train Focus

Focus alone can’t save you – but it sure as hell helps!

Focusing makes it harder to get distracted, helps you to avoid the mental burden of context switching, and increases the likelihood of finishing any action successfully from beginning to the very end.

I’ve described a simple yet powerful way of focusing when working on the computer in my post Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

G) ALWAYS have a PAPER to-do list in front of you with the NEXT action

Before going to sleep (= leveraging the subconscious mind), prepare a paper list of actions for the next day that you MUST do the next day (= leveraging focus).

Place it on your desk (= leveraging the environment.) You can start with just 1 or 2 actions, and ramp it up over time. After waking up, immediately begin working on the first action (= leveraging the peak state of the freshly rebooted mind)

If you do this, your day will be completely different. How different? Successful different.

More on this in Be Successful First Thing in the Morning and Seriously, Stop Sabotaging Your 2012 Goals.

H) Have a list of goals on your wall

We need to constantly re-focus. Every time you focus on your goals, it will push other distracting thoughts out of your mind (at least a little bit).

Print your goals and post them on the wall. Read the list once or twice daily. I read mine after waking up, and before going to sleep.

I) Manage your emotional state

It’s hard to be successful when you are lethargic or angry. But you CAN control your emotions. How? Take actions that are INCOMPATIBLE with any negative emotions you might be feeling. Move. Jump. Dance. Walk. Run. Smile. And then, TAKE ACTION! Believe me; taking the right action WILL make you happy. Being successful will make you blissful.

J) Get Creative and Do Something Else

Your situation is unique. You need to get creative, and whatever it takes, break the Failure Patterns. Stack the deck in your favor as much as possible.

Summary

You have two brains: Rational brain and caveman brain.

The caveman brain prefers instant gratification over long-term success. By stepping in, the caveman brain slows or halts our progress towards your goals set by the rational brain.

You need to learn how to outsmart the caveman brain and cooperate with him.

There are two behavioral patterns that humans executes all the time:

• The Success Pattern: Intention for action => Action => Success!
• The Failure Pattern: Intention for action=> Caveman brain doesn’t like and has a better idea => Different action => Failure.

You need to break the Failure patterns and transfer them into the success pattern. To do that, we have to be creative and stack the deck in our favor, by making the success easy and failure hard.

You can stack the deck in your favor by:

• Making it harder to do the undesired behavior
• Making it easier to do the desired behavior
• Making it painful to do the undesired behavior (e.g. by making a significant commitment to others and placing cash on the line)
• Eliminating distractions
• Eliminating commitments to irrelevant projects and people
• Training focus
• Always having a paper to-do list in front of you, and writing tasks for the next day the day before
• Having a list of goals on the wall so you can constantly re-focus
• Managing your emotional state by taking actions incompatible with negative emotions
• Being creative and breaking the Failure Pattern by any means necessary

The whole process of achieving goals by outsmarting yourself for success works like this:

1. Pick a goal that you really want.
2. Make a quick action plan so you know the steps to achieve your goal.
3. Start with the first step immediately.
4. Take massive action and observe what’s going on – both in your thoughts and behavior.
5. Discover Failure Patterns.
6. Once discovered, break the Failure Patterns. Stack the deck in your favor as much as possible to transform them into Success Patterns.
7. Go back to 4, repeat until the goal is achieved.

Now it’s your turn!

If you’ve read this far, you are determined to succeed. So put this in action!

What are some of the Failure Patterns in your life? How do you plan to fix them? Post in comments below.

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And if you want to make my day, link to this post and/or to www.dextronet.com. Thank you.

About the author

Jiri Novotny+ has started programming when he was 7, and gotten interested in personal development at 14. He reads 40-50 books a year, and always does crazy experiments to improve and grow.

Jiri is the author of Swift To-Do List 7. His ongoing goal is to create the best task and notes organizer for Windows.

Jiri’s life purpose is help others reach their full potential.

Related Posts:

• Seriously, Stop Sabotaging Your 2023 Goals
• Achieving Goals Like a Mad Klingon
• Be Successful First Thing in the Morning
• This one simple habit will help you get everything done
• New research explains why you can’t get anything done
• So, do you want to build 100 tiny houses, or 1 skyscraper?

Outsmarting Yourself for Success is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

How about your pet project? Do you think that you will ever finish it, if you don’t put in effort consistently?

Just wake up, and start working on the most important goal. Just for 5 minutes. It will be more – but the 5 minute target removes all excuses.

Success creates more success, and achievement creates more achievement. It feels SO GOOD to complete something RIGHT AWAY in the morning, before some lazy late-sleepers are even waking up. Talk about a head start!

There is nothing like early morning success. It truly sets the tone for the day.

Are you thinking that it won’t work for you? Perhaps it won’t. But I urge you to try it for yourself, because I’m sure it will work. Things in motion tend to stay in motion. Once you accomplish something – you will want to accomplish more. In fact, you will be excited! You will wonder “What else can I achieve today? How great I could make this day?” If you begin your day with a perfect track-record, you will go to extreme lengths to keep it that way.

This might seem like such a small thing – but once you experience it, I promise you will understand how huge impact this can have for you.

And remember – it works the other way around too! If you begin your day by goofing around and surfing the web, chances are, you won’t accomplish much that day. Avoid wasting the start of perfectly great days like a plague. Start of your day can literally make or break it. And your life is nothing more than a collection of days!

Humor me and try this. After all, what could you lose? Do you want more excitement, enthusiasm and sense of accomplishment in your life? Since you are reading this post, I bet your answer is resounding YES!

So, here is what I suggest you to do immediately:

Write your most important goal for tomorrow on a piece of paper and post it somewhere where you will see it after you wake up tomorrow. It can be your alarm clock, computer screen, or mirror in the bathroom. And if you want to get the maximum out of this, go to bed a bit sooner than usual – and wake up a bit sooner than usual, too! After you wake up, you will see the reminder. Then just do it!

Arguably, I believe that mornings are better than evenings for working on your most important personal goals. Sure, everyone is asleep at night so there is silence and so and so, but mornings have their advantages too. The main advantage is that in the morning you are fresh, and your mental desktop is completely free. It’s like a freshly rebooted Windows computer ;-) If you live a healthy life and exercise, you should be at your peak state in the morning. So why not fully harness that edge, before 1000 little busy-spams of the regular day attack your brain? And hey, you can always do both – mornings and evenings.

The first hour of your day is the navigator of the day – so make sure you navigate your day right.

(And no, after posting the paper reminder for tomorrow’s goal, there is no special reason to wait until tomorrow. Once you prepare the paper, then do something – anything – towards your goal – right now!)

- By Jiri Novotny+, the obsessed author of task management software for Windows, Swift To-Do List. Jiri’s life quest is to become a productivity and achievement world-class expert to empower others, and his current main goal is to create the best task and notes management software for Windows.

PS: Have trouble with focusing? Then read Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?, also by yours truly.

Related Posts:

• Achieving Goals Like a Mad Klingon
• Seriously, Stop Sabotaging Your 2023 Goals
• So, do you want to build 100 tiny houses, or 1 skyscraper?
• Outsmarting Yourself for Success
• 10 Benefits Of Being Organized: From Chaos To Freedom
• This one simple habit will help you get everything done

Be Successful First Thing in the Morning is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

But let me make one thing straight first: This incredible goal achievement technique is not for the faint of heart. If you are scared yet, better go away now. There is no turning back ;-)

You’ve probably heard that the bad boys (or Klingons) always get the girl, and nice guys are left wallflowering on the sidelines.

Well, it’s the same with goals. Nice goals finish last.

The nice goals are rarely achieved, but bad-ass goals that will make your life hell, unless you accomplish them, will get accomplished. It’s not like that there is any other option, really (unless you like living in hell :-).

“Whoa, OK, buddy, wait a minute… What are you talking about?!”

I’m talking about my beautifully simple and scary-effective way of accomplishing worthy goals.

The truth is that whenever I’m fighting with my willpower, I usually lose. I have only precious little amount of willpower available to me every day, and I use it to outsmart myself. The technique described here gives me an incredible leverage.

When I want to get from nothing to something great, this is what I do. You just need to:

1. Choose a worthy goal.
2. Double-check that you really, really want it.
3. Commit to it like a madman. (Read on!)
4. Plow through like a Klingon. No looking back.
5. Celebrate.

BUT! The tricky part is the point 3 – the commitment. I’ve discovered that’s where 99% of the trouble lies whenever I want to achieve any goal. I’ve been experimenting with various forms of commitment, and I’ve drawn a conclusion that it is the commitment will make or break your goal.

The “commitment” we usually do is something like „So, OK, I’m going to do this. Maybe. One day. Hopefully. Anyway, what’s on the TV?“

Sounds lame? It is. What works much, much better is: “Yes! I’m going to do this, no matter what. And I will make sure that my life will be a total hell if I won’t. That’s how committed I am! In your face, laziness!” (Following that by a raging Klingon battlecry and frantically throwing the TV from the window is entirely optional).

Whenever I use this technique, all I need is to want the goal badly enough, so I don’t mind that it is so freaking scary to commit to it like a madman. Once that little hurdle is solved, the rest will take care of itself.

Let’s go through the “5 rules of achieving goals like a mad Klingon” now. The rule 3 is the most important one, as it contains the super powerful “madman commitment” technique.

Rule 1: Worthy Royal Goals

Crappy goals should be dropped. How about the noblest blue-blooded audacious goals of the awesome breed? Now we are talking!

Worthy goals are goals that can change your life for the better, forever. Building a new business to the point it can provide you with a financial freedom, shedding weight, gaining weight, learning a new language (or two), writing a book and getting it published, creating a successful blog with 30.000 readers, making your first successful iPhone or Android app – you name it. No one else can name it for you, anyway. It’s your life we are talking about here.

Your goals must be worthy of you – your time, your effort, your energy, your mind.

For example, some goals that were worth my time in the past were: Achieving financial freedom by creating the best to-do list software for Windows and building a successful business around it, creating the habit of exercising daily, attaining excellent health by eating right, building and furnishing my dream home, learning to understand women (no easy task, trust me ;-), etc. And I’m freaking glad I’ve accomplished these goals. I’m getting a warm fuzzy feeling just thinking about them now.

I always make sure that the goal is a perfect match for me. It should be focused on the area where I need to grow the most.

And most importantly, the goal must make me happy. Just thinking and day-dreaming about it should make me happy. Remember: It’s our own happiness that should ultimately guide us.

Rule 2: Double-check that you really, really want it

Here is a quick mental check list that I always do before committing to any goal.

Quick checklist:

• How badly I want it? (Nothing less than “Real bad” won’t cut it!)
• Do I want it, or it’s my boss, spouse, or parents that want it? If it’s not I who wants it, full-stop! I’ve recently finished reading the great classic Atlas Shrugged, and I think it’s no coincidence everyone who wanted to live in the Atlantis valley (while the world was falling apart) had to make this oath: “I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
• Do I actually want it, or do I want to want it? This happens to me when I’m scared to get out of my comfort zone in a particular area of my life in order to grow in it, so I’m choosing goals in safe areas where I’m already getting good results.
• Can I accept the consequences? If it’s a big goal, my life will probably be quite different once I accomplish the goal. Am I ready to accept all the consequences?

Rule 3: Commit to it like a madman

When I complete the two previous steps, I am 100% sure that I want to achieve my goal. Time to bring the heat up. The goal is on fire, we don’t need no water!

I can now fully commit to it. The word “fully” here probably means so monstrous commitment, that all other commitments you have ever made to yourself look tiny, like the human-ants running around the Discworld on the back of a giant turtle Great A’Tuin. *Gulp*, indeed.

What doesn’t work

Just before I give you the ultimate madman commitment technique, I would like to pin-point what doesn’t work. The usual ways we commit to goals just don’t work. All of the following is not a bad advice, but it’s not very effective:

• Make the commitment to yourself. Tell yourself that you will achieve the goal, and that you are ready to pay the price.
• Print the goal in a huge font to a sheet of a paper, and post it to a prominent place at home.
• Edit your PC wallpaper in MS Paint (or other graphical editor), and write your goal all over it.
• Create a small card with your goal, and place it in your wallet as a constant reminder.
• Publicly announce that you will work on your goal, and that you are going to post regular daily or weekly updates regarding your goal. Announce it on Facebook, Twitter, and tell this to everyone you see regularly, etc.

All of these points make sense, and I usually do them anyway, but they are nothing compared to:

THE MADMAN COMMITMENT!

The madman commitment works like this:

1. You make a deal with a partner you can trust. It can be your friend, your roommate, one of your parents or grand-parents, or one of your other family relatives.
2. You tell them exactly what goal you want to achieve, by what deadline (if applicable), how are you going to measure the progress, and how are you going report to them (eg. by sending them a text message every day, by messaging them on Facebook or emailing them every day, or by calling them once a week, etc).
3. If you fail to work on your goal the way you plan to, promise that you will do something that is going to be hell for you – like giving them $5000, or cleaning their toilet once a week for a year. Be creative – it should be something great for them, and hell for you.
4. Their duty is to hold you accountable and demand that you fulfill your end of the deal, shall you fail to work on your goal as planned.
5. If you ever forget to report to them as you’ve agreed, they should call you to check your progress.

Before I tell you why it works so well, let me give you an example:

Let’s say that you want to build a new online business selling Android apps. You want to release your first app and have it in the Android Market in the next 6 months. You might not know much about the development of Android apps, but you know if you put in the effort, you can definitely make it. So you make a deal with your best friend:

“I will work on my Android app at least 2 hours every single day for 6 months, or until the app is released. Every day, I will send you an email report of what I’ve learned or accomplished that day, and how many hours I’ve roughly worked. If I skip a day, it’s OK, but if I ever skip two days in a row, I will give you $2000, and do your laundry and clean your windows every week for the next 12 months. You are to hold me accountable, and demand that I hold my end of the deal. If I ever forget to send you an email, you are to call me and ask me about my progress.”

Want to make it extra serious? Put that in writing, and both sign it.

Suddenly, there is no place for excuses. Hell or achievement. Pick one.

Why it works so well?

Just imagine that you made the example deal above, and that you’ve additionally decided to work on your app in the morning.

Your typical day will look like this: You wake up. You think: Should I work on my Android app for 2 hours, or wire my friend $2000 and be his housemaid for a year? Achievement or hell? You will always choose to put the work in.

You even do not have to think about it! It doesn’t even require your willpower! It is a done deal! You are simply choosing the more pleasant option, like we humans tend to.

Now imagine that you have not made that deal with your friend, and made a commitment only to yourself. Your typical day will look like this:

You wake up, and you think: Should I work on my Android app, or sleep some more? Well, I guess I will sleep some more. It can’t hurt. 45 minutes later, you get up, and think: Should I work on that Android app, or check the Facebooks, the Twitters, and the Wonderful Worlds Of The Internets first? I guess that Facebooks it is! And so on.

Without the madman commitment, your choice will always be: Work or some random pleasure? You will tend to choose the more pleasant option. A lot. Yes, sometimes, you might work on your app a bit, because you really want to or it’s fun, but you won’t push yourself too hard. You will take it easy. Time will fly by, days will get wasted, time lost, and in 6 months, you might not have more than a crude prototype, when you could already had an awesome polished app released, first sales, and another app under-way, thanks to the ultimate power of the madman commitment.

Another part of the magic is that what gets measured, gets done. Just the fact that you are systematically tracking your progress (and reporting it to someone) will make you infinitely more likely to accomplish your goal.

Rule 4: Plow through like a Klingon

Putting in the actual work is usually the hard part, but the funny thing with Mad Klingon Goals is that this is the easiest part. As illustrated in the example above, doing the actual work will be ridiculously easy. The hard part is making the commitment.

Every day, you are like an angry Klingon that is choosing between a glorious battle or exuberant humiliation. You just don’t have to think about it. It’s a done deal. Glorious battle it is, from the moment you wake up.

Rule 5: Celebrate

Once your goal is achieved, throw hell of a party. Or don’t. You can now bend matter to your will. You deserve it all. The reality is your oyster.

Think about the possibilities…

Powerful, powerful stuff, right?

A tiny bit of willpower to make the madman commitment is much more effective that battling yourself every day to do the work. You can just pre-decide all the battles – all that is needed is the madman commitment.

Leave a reply below. What has helped you the most when achieving your goals? Has this inspired you? Can you imagine making such a commitment? Have you ever made any similar deal with someone?

If you have a business, would you be scared if your competitors were using this technique?

Shameless plug: I’m the author of Swift To-Do List for Windows. If you want to get your stuff organized and have all your notes, tasks and reminders in one place, Swift To-Do List is the tool for you. I use it myself every day. I love it, and I’m not alone.

You might also enjoy my post 10 best tricks of fooling myself to work. And if you do not know what goal to set, then the post Raise your awareness of your life might help.

Related Posts:

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• 10 best tricks of fooling myself to work
• 10 Benefits Of Being Organized: From Chaos To Freedom
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• Be Successful First Thing in the Morning
• Double your productivity, stop procrastinating and master your habits with new video training

Achieving Goals Like a Mad Klingon is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Although you can choose between starting the day with the easiest task or starting the day with the hardest task, there is a far better approach. Starting the day with the easiest or hardest task is suboptimal. Why? Because importance nor reward is taken into account.

The best thing you can do is to:

Start the day with the most important task

This has the biggest payoff. The most difficult task is often not important at all – but the actually most important task? Boy, if you make just a little progress on that, you will feel great.

But what if you are not feeling like doing the most important task? Or, what if you are not feeling like working at all? Well, then:

Start the day with the most fun task

This will shoot your motivation up. It will feel rewarding.

This approach can be especially of benefit for you if you have problems with procrastination. If you are feeling like procrastinating, this can save the day! (Another solution might be to break the most important task into tiny sub-tasks, then eliminating them one by one. See my previous post Deal with procrastination with 100% success)

There are numerous benefits:

1. Quick reward
2. Feeling productive
3. Feeling motivated
4. Most importantly: Things in motion tend to stand in motion – that’s the physics law. If you have finished one task, why not finish a second one? And then another, and another? Go get them!

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Start your day with the most important or most fun task is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Step 1: Write your goal down

It all starts with the written intention to accomplish your goal. Incredible fact is that just writing your goal down will automatically make it more likely to be achieved. This step is crucial.

Swift To-Do List 7 is an ideal personal organizer application for organizing not just your goals, but also all tasks, notes and reminders associated with them.

Because every goal is a project, create a new to-do list for your goal in Swift To-Do List 7. The task list manager has various icons for your to-do lists that you can use to track and visually distinguish your goals. There is a target icon, and also flags in 4 colors and many other icons.

Good goals should excite you. They must have a heart. Your heart.

Step 2: How you can achieve it? Think it through.

Think deep and hard how will you achieve your goal. Use your imagination to visualize that the goal is already accomplished. How does it feel?

Play yourself a movie of you accomplishing the goal in your mind.

Write all your ideas and thoughts down.

Good goals should be measurable, concrete, and achievable. Measurable – that’s very important, because if there is a gray area where the goal can be considered achieved – or not, you will never know if you’ve already achieved your goal, and this will demotivate you.

Step 3: Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you willing to pay the price?
2. Are you sure? Are you willing to accept all the consequences and responsibilities that come with your goal?
3. By looking at your past, is it likely that you will succeed? What could you do to change that?
4. Are you willing to start today? If not, then perhaps it won’t change tomorrow.
5. Do you honestly believe that you will succeed? If not, why not? And what could you do to ensure your success?

Again, write your answers and thoughts about your goal. In order to achieve it, you must believe it.

Step 4: Create action list

Fill your goal’s to-do list with with the key actions that you could do now. Look for the maximum pay-off. Write notes for each task where relevant.

Throw overwhelming force at your goal. Do everything in your power to ensure that you can achieve your goal.

Can you use recurring tasks? Reminders?

Can you create a habit around your goal? If you can develop a habit that will help you achieve your goal, and stick with it, then your success is guaranteed.

Step 5: Execute, track your progress and don’t give up

When you set the goal, you are likely going to be motivated and energized, and you might even start to work on your goal a little, but the hard part is not giving up.

This is where repeating reminders, or recurring tasks might come handy. Swift To-Do List 7 can repeatedly remind you of your goal. In fact, you can write a note to your future self. Write yourself a message about how you really want to achieve your goal, and how you want to keep up.

Now is the time to do the hard work. Good luck. Never give up, work as often as possible on your goal. Every little step in the right direction helps.

Don’t stop until you achieve it.

Change your environment to help you achieve your goal. Think about it – how could you modify your environment to enforce achievement of your goal? Perhaps you could post some post-it notes around for yourself. Or, for example, if you are trying to lose weight, you could throw-off the junk food from your fridge. Or, if you are trying to save money, you could place piggy-bank on your table. Do anything that will help you to stay on the right track!

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• Double your productivity, stop procrastinating and master your habits with new video training
• Seriously, Stop Sabotaging Your 2023 Goals
• This one simple habit will help you get everything done
• Meta Productivity released! “Dramatically Increase Your Productivity”
• Be Successful First Thing in the Morning
• Achieving Goals Like a Mad Klingon

How to achieve your goals in 5 steps is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Getting organized with Swift To-Do List 7 is really easy, and has many benefits:

1. You will upgrade your brain to version 2.0

If you take all the work-related stuff and to-do’s from your head and place them in Swift To-Do List 7, a wonderful thing happens – suddenly, your mind has 100% resources available and 100% focus just for the current task at hand.

2. You will advance in your career faster

Stop wasting time on tasks with zero impact and go straight to the juicy, meaty stuff that really matters and that can move you forward in your career. This is possible only when you are organized using a great task list manager like Swift To-Do List 7 that allows you to prioritize your tasks.

3. You can double or triple your productivity

With less time and mental resources wasted, you will have more time for the important stuff. The real game changer comes from your upgraded brain though – if you can finally fully focus and always know what to do next, you can double your productivity easily. If you are unorganized or stressed, you are much less productive than you think.

4. You will be more motivated

Success brings motivation. It is so much easier to achieve success when you are organized! In fact, work can sometimes feel like fun.

5. You will have more time

It’s really simple: If you are more productive, you get more done, and you have more time.

6. You will have more money

We all know that time is money, but success brings you money too, which can be a really significant benefit. By using trusted gold trading platforms, you can turn your time and effort into smart opportunities that help grow your wealth even faster. For example, exploring opportunities like wholesale gold bullion Melbourne can also complement a well-planned financial strategy by adding long-term value and stability.

7. You will eliminate any possible stress

With all your tasks and notes in one place, safely stored in reliable task list management software like Swift To-Do List 7, there is nothing to worry about. You can even use inbuilt reminders and recurrent tasks to make sure that you will never forget anything again. Liberate yourself from clutter and stress.

8. You will reach your full potential

If you get organized, you can achieve much more than if you are limiting yourself by being disorganized.

9. You will be able to achieve your goals more easily

All the benefits work together and give you more power to do what you truly want, and that is the real freedom.

10. You will love your work and life

How can you NOT love your life when you are successful, happy and without stress?

With the right attitude, Swift To-Do List 7 can literally change your life. I personally use it myself every day not just to run and manage our whole business, but to take control of my own life.

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• “Why should I care about being organized?”

10 Benefits Of Being Organized: From Chaos To Freedom is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog