How do you handle those challenging days?

Every have one of those days (or weeks) when you just cannot stay focused to accomplish anything? And it’s a day (or week) when you NEED to get a lot done? How do you handle that?

I have to rely on discipline. Through the last few months, I’m learning the value of putting habits in place and sticking with them. Sure, you cut yourself a little slack every once in a while, but there is great value in creating solid habits to move you toward your goals, even when you can’t seem to focus on them.

For me, that means getting up early and setting aside time to write and run, every day. Even weekends. Even the days when I really want to stay in bed. Even the days when it’s cold outside, and I just want to curl up and hide.

But the benefit of that discipline is that later in the day, I can be satisfied with the knowledge that yes, I exercised both my mind and my body. I did get my blog written (or at least drafted) and I did run my miles.

And in the long run, having accomplished both of those things makes me happier and more effective in other areas of my life. (And less crabby as a general rule.)

The beauty of discipline is that when those habits are in place, there’s less consideration of IF I will do this. Autopilot kicks in and I just find myself DOING it. It’s time to write, so I sit down and write. Time to go run, and I just head out. No thinking about it, just do it. And once I go ahead and get started, I find that it is usually the best part of my day.

The rewards are great. The rest of my day tends to be more effective because I’ve gotten started on the right track.

What disciplines do you have in place and how are you rewarded by them?

 

The enemies of discipline

Photo courtesy of SuperFantastic (Creative Commons)

Procrastination. Resistance. Laziness.

These are the adversaries I fight against almost every morning. I get up early, grab my coffee, and sit down at my computer to write. I assure myself that I have discipline because I’m up early. Don’t you agree?

But then Resistance rears his ugly head by getting me distracted from writing. The inbox is full, so I go through it to reduce the distraction, but not completely, debate on paying some bills, go through old mail. Basically, I start and stop a bunch of things, none of which is urgent and none of which involves writing.

Ok, back to writing. I open my browser, since I might need to look something up online, I’m tempted to check Facebook, just for a minute. You do it too, don’t you?  Ten minutes later, I shake off that feeling of lethargy and refocus on my document. After all, I’m disciplined and ready to write.

I hear a little voice wondering if any urgent emails came in during the night – oh, right, I need to just make sure. So I launch Outlook and take a peek. Then I get a refill on my coffee.

There has been plenty written on discipline and combating procrastination and what author Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance” (with a capital “R”) in his books The War of Art and Turning Pro. Unfortunately, there is not a long-term fix, as each day brings a new battle.

Writing is work, and I can’t wait on some fluffy perfect stimulus or flash of insight. Writing is hard work, plain and simple. There are cues and habits I can develop, but it all boils down to the fact that I have to show up and do it. Every day. No exceptions.

And whether you work at writing or another kind of project, I have found a few tricks that help me stay focused:

• Set a goal – whether that is to write a certain number of words or to complete a specific portion of a project.
• Remove distractions – you’ve heard this before, but turn off email notifications, disable your Twitter or Facebook alerts, and close the door.
• Don’t kick yourself – if you do get sidetracked, don’t berate yourself. Just refocus and try again.
• Do it again – once you have hunkered down and accomplished your goal, set another goal and keep moving forward (of course, maybe celebrate a little bit first…)

How do you combat these “enemies” of productivity?