What was the coolest gift you received this Christmas? I had a blast with the stopwatch my GF gave me. I always wanted to have one but for some reason the store was always out of stock every time I set out to purchase one.

What was it for?

I have talked about Laziness is all in the mind and procrastination syndrome which deals about accomplishing tasks and goals by using courage and the power of our mind as our main weapon for success. But what about small things like immediately getting up when our alarm rings in the morning, drinking our daily supplements, or washing dishes we have just used? These might be simple and routinary tasks but it seems it takes us a lot of rolling before we get out of bed or wait until we run out of dishes before we clean them up.

When people are faced with tons of workload, confused, they usually asked themselves what they need to do first; most people struggle to identify and act on what is urgent rather than what is important. Identifying what is urgent against what is important is essential in creating our to-do’s, managing our timeline and becoming a high performer individual. Some of the thoughts we encounter while deciding on our priorities include:

I never thought about television, nor did I feel that people still watch TV until Steve posted about his 30-day non-television watching exercise. It seems odd but I came to realize it has been years since I watched shows regularly and had it not been for World Cup 2006, it should have been almost two years without TV, which came natural instead of using a conscious non-watching chart.

The last time I remembered watching regular television was back in high school around 14 years ago during the time of Baywatch and Battle of Brains (local intellectual competition); and later I occasionally caught The Practice once in a blue moon. The only time I get to watch television is during an nba finals game (but for the last three seasons I was content on reading the live text report at sports site) and the World Cup which happen once every four years.

I was involved in a project that required me to function as both a team lead and at the same time given modules that of a programmer to accomplish.

It seemed very easy during the start of the project. But later on I realized the amount of modules given to me was bigger than anyone’s’ module and had to be accomplished half of the project timeline since it was supposed to be implemented across all modules. Furthermore, I could only spend half of my daily time since I had a lot of other tasks as a team lead.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone is guilty of procrastination at least once in their life. We have to be aware that procastination is a sickness which only resides in your mind. There are a lot of reasons why people procrastinate and we shall be discussing the most common ones.

Plain boring

The task is boring and people normally put this off for some other time. Think again. The more we procrastinate; the more we find ourselves being drawn from completing our tasks which would feel more unpleasant as time goes by.

But remember its all in the mind. Think of it in another way. Instead of thinking how boring it is, think how much relief and satisfaction it would give by finishing it right away. Get excited that the faster you accomplish your tasks the faster it gets off your world.

Confused

Confusion kills productivity. Whenever we are confused, our initial preference is to put it away for the time being. I have been guilty of this occasionally. My general principle says I cannot waste time resolving issues when I can accomplish other things right away.

My previous architect disagreed though. He would stress to seek out help, use Google groups and find every means possible to understand and get it done. His main philosophy is that I will have to finish it, so finish it now, and not tomorrow, or in any other day.

Failure

Everyone fears failure. Everyone wants to win either knowingly or unconsciously. Proscatination is a bigger failure than failure itself. Face failure like a Man.

Procrastination is bad as time flies so fast and you will never notice how much opportunities have gone away because of this attitude.

Get hold of yourself and get things done. Its all in the mind.

Updated: 102006

The Substitute – Failure Is Not an Option