Cultivate a habit of DOING no matter WHAT

Life is not all glamour and glitz. Even the things which are difficult to do, perhaps because a lot of courage is required, are not always sexy cool things which make good anecdotes. Sometimes there’s things you have to do and not only are they difficult, they’re also really dull. For most people these are things like cleaning, accounts/administrative upkeep, car maintenance, day-to-day organisation, D.I.Y, etc.

 

Guess what, it’s not only crucial that you cultivate a habit of doing these things regularly and without procrastination, but it’s also important you actually cultivate doing them better than ever you used to. Everything in your life is a reflection of you so as you improve so should everything in your life.

 

As an example from my life, I found out recently that starting a business and preparing to move to Spain both involve a hell of a lot of very tedious things. Tedious things which are also not particularly simple – they require concentration but I find them terribly boring. As such I had to learn to plow myself into these tasks even though the immediate reward was not apparent.

 

 

Don’t let anyone tell you to-do lists are bad. I’ve heard people say that – it’s nonsense. To-do lists are good – WHEN you do them.

 

That’s the trick, when you make a to-do list make sure you get the damn thing done, and not just one or two things, get the whole damn list ticked off and in record time.

 

The best time to make a to-do list with a bunch of tedious but necessary stuff on it? As soon as you get up. You know exactly where you stand with respect to the day. You’re going to get this stuff done, the quicker you do, the more time you’ll have completely free to do either more creative things, or maybe some recreation – who knows? ;)

 

 

These kinds of tasks you want to attack with grit – by which I mean with firmness of character. Rob Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintanence uses the term gumption.

 

It means that when you know it’s time to, for example, do your account work, it’s quite likely that you will feel that instant temptation to avoid it and to procrastinate instead. That must be stamped out immediately. If you throw yourself into the task with gumption and grit you will plow through the 4 or 5 times that your body will again attempt to get you to procrastinate and you’ll reach a point at which momentum begins to carry you through.

 

At that point not only does continuing the task become easier than stopping it, but actually you will suddenly find that you WANT to continue.

 

 

Have you ever thought to yourself – “I really don’t want to clean today, but I have to.” Then you start cleaning and everything is such a struggle and you just want to stop. But then after five or ten minutes you don’t mind it so much, and then in 20 minutes you no longer want to stop at all, and in-fact you find yourself in a cleaning frenzy – cleaning not only the areas you planned on cleaning but actually cleaning other areas too!

 

How strange that now you’re doing more of this thing that you didn’t even want to start before...

 

That’s because you gritted through it. You had enough gumption to plow through your bodies initial objections, and now your momentum is carrying you.

 

 

It’s very important to always have this attitude towards these kinds of tasks. The moment you start letting these little things slide they will only ever come back to haunt you. Not just in terms of the effects from the immediate thing you’re avoiding, but also in a more long-term sense as you lose the habit of action in-place of a habit of procrastination.

Take these things as seriously as you take anything else. They may seem unimportant in terms of your long-term personal development... your £300k sports car that you dream about having every day may seem completely unconnected to organising your utility bills, but in reality it is part of a large group of little annoying and seemingly unimportant tasks for which you must(style) cultivate a habit of doing(style).

 

Use that motivation which these, just as you do with the bigger more obvious things. As with them it is a case of taking action leads things in the right direction, and procrastination leads down the slope away from the things you want.

 

A few years ago I used to be terrible at getting up in the mornings. But as soon as I made the connection between waking up early and success, I began to get up every single morning – early. Not only that I’d leap out of bed, even though at the time my diet was so terrible that I felt horrible in the mornings (it’s not any more, I feel great now).

 

To begin with I’d awake... and for a split second think, “oh no... more sleep please...”. Then I’d get a FLASH of my vision, a vivid image of my goals and aims slipping away... and I’d tear myself out of my bed.

 

 

Here’s the really good news – gumption is actually a personality trait. That means if you keep doing it, it gets easier to do. It’s probably one of the slowest types of personality trait to develop, especially if you’re in the habit of being a sloth at home.

 

Are you a sloth at home? Time to change. From now on, you power into menial necessary tasks with as much gumption as possible. Not only that, improve them just as you do with every other area of your life. Take that bit of extra care ironing your clothes, make a new spreadsheet which better organises your finances, give your PC a good dust for once, and whatever other things you’ve been putting off but should be doing regularly.

 

Make yourself a coffee and go do one right now. Has your brain already tried to make you avoid it? Plow harder, get through the gravitational pull of procrastination. This stuff is important.