I recommend finding an accountability partner who will check in on you to make sure you are getting things done. If no one is counting on you, it becomes much easier to wait until tomorrow or when you have more energy. If you're not getting things done, set up situations where people are counting on you to do what you say. I would never wake up on my own to go running at 6 am in the morning but if I know my friend is going to be waiting outside, I get out of bed no matter how cold, dark, wet it is outside.
People who usually "motivate" me to do hard work are my clients, the readers of my blog, my friends and my family. So what's the difference between the times we actually do the difficult work and the times we talk ourselves out of it?įor me, I find that I do hard, effortful work when someone else is counting on it being done.
We have the incredible gift of being able to talk ourselves out of doing difficult and effortful tasks. It's even harder when you are doing it all by yourself. Take time to paint a vivid picture of "done" How will you know that you've accomplished it? They keep doing and doing but they don't know when to stop.įor the things you want to get done, what does done look like? People don't get things done because they don't know what "done" looks like.
Your boss at work knows this and that is why he/she gives you such tight deadlines.Īre you taking advantage of Parkinson's law?ĭo you set firm deadlines for your own personal or professional goals? If you give yourself a lot of time to complete something, you'll end up taking all that time despite being able to do it faster. When you set a vacation date, you've given yourself a deadline to finish all the tasks you need to do before you go. This is why you can get so much done right before you go on vacation. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Also, you'll find that Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British scholar, was right when he said: You'll quickly find that when there is no deadline, it's easy to let other activities or projects, usually the easier ones, skip in line regardless of their importance. Just tell yourself you want to accomplish X in the vague future and leave it at that. If you want to make sure you procrastinate on your next project, don't set a definitive deadline.
Once you have a better picture of how to do what you want to get done, start right away. If possible, choose someone who has similar values and beliefs to you so you are more likely to resonate with their course of action. If you are in this situation, I highly recommend that you stop trying to guess and ask someone, who has already accomplished what you want, how he/she achieved it. have so many options and are frozen by the fear of choosing the wrong one.
They've been assigned a task at work or they want to accomplish a personal goal but they don't do it because they don't know how. One of the main reasons is because they are not sure what to do. why don't people get things done? Not Sure What to Do No matter what the situation, it is worth understanding the most common reasons things don't get done. Maybe you do get things done but you want to get more things done. Maybe you deal with these people and they drive you crazy. Maybe you're one of these people and you're not sure why you don't get things done. There are people who just can't get things done.