Why choose pain intentionally?

Not making a decision leads to the decision being made for you, and it’s usually the most damaging of potential outcomes.

All across your life, procrastination leads to decisions being made for you. Forced to give up that car you love, forced to lose out on time with your kids, forced to lose a relationship, forced to lose a job, forced to lose your business, forced to live or work in a way that you don’t like, and just generally forced into all kinds of uncomfortable situations.

All of which are usually avoidable by just working and starting at the work right now. No more waiting, just begin.

Procrastination is not choosing to have fun or avoid work, procrastination is choosing to suffer more tomorrow–and suffer with regret.

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

It’s about what you do

Not about what you get done. Of course, getting stuff done is a great side effect, but longevity, and consistency, and happiness with what you do is about focusing on the process of doing the work. If anything good comes of it, great.

Spoiler: If you do the work, good things will come of it.

But still, just focus on doing the work and the rest takes care of itself.

We guessed correctly

It’s valuable to think ahead, but also significant to remember that we’re just taking a guess. Sometimes it can go to our head when we get it right. It was us that added the value and had some insight and maybe we’re really brilliant!

This headiness will conceal the fact that we made a guess and committed to one avenue and it worked out for us. We trick ourselves into believing that we're better than we are.

We can make good guesses and bad guesses, so make good guesses but, still, remember that we’re guessing.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

Focusing on what it will be like when we get there

Kids ask for what they want and dream big. They see something they want and ask if they can go there and do the thing or get the thing. They don’t have much planned out besides that.

When we get older, we spend all the time focusing on what it’s going to be like when we get the thing or go to the place. For instance, “I can’t move to San Francisco, my bills will be out of control!”

The young person, the kid, he’ll just go and figure it out.

Some call it irresponsible, but it is interesting to note that most of the innovation and explosive entrepreneurial empires happen when you’re younger.

It can be good to be young and dumb when it keeps you free from worrying about what it will be like when you get there. Focus on the dream and not the “responsible” stuff. You’re smarter and more flexible and harder working (especially when you’re desperate) than you may realize.

The worst thing you can do is not finish

What is your definition of “done” for every project you work on?

Do you know? Have you set forth a few parameters which, when met, would mean that the task or project is done?

It’s a vital thing to do, especially for pie-in-the-sky-dreamer-perfectionists like me. I must choose what constitutes done and good enough otherwise I can go a year and a half without doing much in the way of creating new content and developing new products for my businesses.

As the saying goes, “The worst thing you can do to a song keeps working on it.”

That’s pretty applicable to most of what we do.

“Thank you for giving up.”

Thank you for giving up. You were catching up to me.”

That’s what your competition is thinking when you’re slacking. You don’t understand how good you have it because you’re so focused on the negative that does or can happen. So you give up or you sabotage your momentum.

You only hurt yourself and your competition is thanking you.

I'm assuming it's easy to assume it’s easy

Not many things are more annoying than when somebody assumes “it’ll be easy for you to do this extra task that falls far outside of the contract we signed.”

There is patronizing air as they assume all the extra work will be easy. Maybe it’s a bit manipulative because they mask sucking extra work out of you by slathering you with fake adulation.

Anyway, whether it’s the skill set of others or the criticisms you have of the decisions they’re making in their life, it’s important to be humble and leave room for kindness.

Life has its difficulties and just because someone carries it well, doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.

Leap into the unknown

What’s next? I don’t know, but neither do you.

I’m only sure that it will force you to grow and learn in ways you would never expect.

You’re not going to drag that pallet of bricks

Do you know what you can do? You can take the bricks one-by-one.

That’s the way to get impossible projects done. Break them down into a thousand small projects and take them one brick at a time.

Decide to be happier

If your life was coming to an end next week, would you still choose to be upset about all these little things? Would we choose to suffer and worry about the distractions of life? Or would we seek the higher purpose in our lives to pull us forward?

As the saying goes, "You have a million problems today, but if you get sick tomorrow, you have only one problem."

Having a higher purpose in life will pull you through the bad days and the various barren stretches through your life. The barren stretches and difficult times happen to us all, the question is how we better deal with them and overcome them.

Are you annoyed in the morning, or happy that you've awakened yet another day? It's up to you to decide that.

I think it begins with choosing to be happy and content with where we are and finding a purpose higher than ourselves to work for in this life.

From that will stem longevity, consistency, and contentment.

Save some energy

It’s tempting to sprint right out of the gate. Work yourself too hard in the morning and you’re spent by lunchtime. Take it easy in the morning, but then empty the tank 12-2pm and you’re still down and out.

But a steady cadence from morning to evening means you get 4-5x the amount of work finished and you feel much better afterward as well.

In everything you do, make sure you actually get started but believe that you’ll maintain a good cadence throughout the day and don’t get overeager from the start line.

This way you can save your energy and start pretty strong, have a pretty strong day, and then finish pretty strong. Also, you’ll feel mentally and physically in shape to have the same pretty good day tomorrow, too.

Save some energy!

Insecurities

Using your internal fear as a reason not to do something shows great insecurity. Your internal fears are almost always a.) irrational and wild and b.) they’re built on how you judge yourself.

That’s important because we judge ourselves by what we know our intentions are. But other people judge us by the actions we do.

It’s important and freeing, to know that the people around you can’t judge your intentions (accurately) so worry more about the real, in-the-flesh actions that you should be doing.

No excuses! Rise up and do that thing.

Waiting for the problem to fix it

The wise man sees the problem coming and adjusts. When you can do this with your clients, you provide a valuable service that they’ll never even know about. They’ll just know that working with you is awesome. You don’t wait until after the project to fix the problem.

If you’re tempted to wait until a complaint happens or a problem arises you still have to fix the problem, but stress is now involved and you look less competent.

If you behave like there is no second chance to fix something, you’ll get it right far more often.

As the old saying goes, if you don’t think you have the time to do it right, what makes you think you’ll have the time to do it twice?

Anticipating problems that may arise, or anticipating what you’ll be asked to do next and being prepared and ready to deliver instantly will be unforgettable–even if the clients(or your boss) have no idea how you are always so well prepared.

Making it harder

They say to work smarter, not harder. But sometimes when you make things more difficult, it forces you to push harder and get more done. You have something you must overcome and you will overcome it. If you work too smart, all the time, you lose some of that killer edge that pushes you upward.

You can only coast in one direction

When you coast, you go one way–and it’s not up.

Coasting in life means you’re heading downhill. Don’t coast.

A plan and some pressure

As the saying goes, to achieve great things, you need two things: a plan and a shortage of time. I believe that was Leonard Bernstein who said that.

For my fellow procrastinators, I think you’ll understand perfectly well.

Without a plan, days can go by and you wonder what you should be doing and why you’re not doing anything. Without pressure, you’ll keep ignoring the plan until it’s too late.

Got to have them. A plan and some pressure. Great things will come of that.

I had something to write about today

But I forget what it was and it’s a busy day so I want to move on to the next thing, but I want to know that I wrote a blog post today and kept the train moving. So that’s why I’m here. Sorry for wasting your time.

Catastrophic failure? Or a very annoying setback?

Among the annoying things in life, unexpected setbacks are the most annoying. The kind of setbacks where you have no idea that it’s coming and then it just gets dropped on your desk and smacks you clean across the face.

Once the thing happens and the setback is setting you back, do you melt down and turn a setback into a catastrophic event, or acknowledge the setback and become comfortable with the fact that you simply have been delayed?

It’s a rhetorical question. I hope the answer that I think is correct is obvious.

Self-discipline or regret

There are a million cliches. Sore today, or sorry tomorrow. You get two choices: the pain of disciplined focused work now, or the pain of regret later. The pain of regret sinks deep within you and never leaves. The pain of discipline converts to euphoria when you achieve your goal.

For some reason, it’s so much easier to pretend like there is no satisfaction associated with that pain of self-discipline and that you’ll escape that pain of regret this time you procrastinate.

The choice is yours to make. Sore today, or sorry tomorrow.

Smelling the roses

They say to stop and smell the roses. Last week I was making some plans with somebody about meeting up early in the morning and I said the name of this town near me called Collegeville, but I had my directions pointed to a different town named Manayunk where I was going. But I kept telling this person that I was going to meet them Collegeville.

I, somehow, had conflated two towns that are nothing similar and even have names wildly different from each other.

The meeting got all fouled up and we had to reschedule because I was in a completely different place than the guy I was meeting with.

I was so focused on the meeting, that I didn’t take a moment to even think about the towns I was speaking about. If I had pulled up a map, or thought about the meeting place, I would have quickly corrected the issue, but I didn’t enjoy the process. I was locked in on the results.

When you don’t stroll through the process and enjoy it, you don’t smell the roses. And when you don’t smell the roses, you’re likely to make an error and probably not even know how it happened.

So, walk more deliberately and smell the roses.