It seems that no matter how nice the hotel is, when you pull the certain closed there’s always a gap between them. I’m on tour and in a hotel rooms more often than I’m at home so I’ve encountered this annoyance hundreds of times. Light finds a way of streaming in through that little gap in the curtain, creating a slice of light through the room that always seems to lead directly to my eyes… as though the room had been designed specifically that way!

After being woken up like this a few too many times, I devised a way to block out this early morning intruder once and for all. It’s called a “Big Chip Clip”. These are the little plastic clips that you can use to hold a half eaten bag of chips closed and wouldn’t you know it, they work just as well on curtains too.

So on your next trip, toss one of those clips into your bag. Before you go to sleep that night use it to clip shut the curtains in your hotel room. You’ll get a much better night’s sleep and not get woken up at the crack of dawn… unless you’ve got noisy neighbors. The clip only works well on them if you can get it to stay put on their mouths and I imagine it’d slip off pretty quickly… just prior to them chasing you down the hall in your PJs!

If you forget the clip you can always use one of the hangers in the room, the kind that has two clips in the bottom for a pair of pants or a skirt. Just turn the hanger sideways and use the two clips to clamp the curtain shut in the middle. It’s better to bring the clip though because in some hotel rooms they’ve made it so you can’t remove the hangers from the rods.

Sweet dreams! And make sure you set a wake up call so the total darkness doesn’t seduce you into sleeping past the check out time

Tip #3 – Paying Bills for Peace of Mind
Tip #4 – How to Read Magazines Fast
Tip #5 – The Simplest To Do List Ever

Update To This Article

The “Take Action Now” time management system referred to in this article / video has been released and is flying out the door. To discover how you can reprogram your brain to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time, click this link

NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was posted…

Dr.Randy J. Prestash

Greetings Josh,

Some of the best advice I give and receive is often the simplest, most direct, and in the form of a “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version”. The ability to grasp complex subjects often takes a paradigm shift to step outside of our typical daily routine and thus gain an alternate perspective. You have done that for me and countless others with your pragmatic approach to so many topics.

I look forward to your upcoming release and expect it will be very effective in promoting positive change. As a physician, I find my “To Do List” ever filled with two types of activities, thus forming my “Must Do List” and my “Want To Do List”. I find that good mental and physical health is best achieved when I take proactive measures to blend that mix to at least 75%/25%.

The feeling of accomplishing something is often a necessary pre-requisite for the ability to totally enjoyed the sense of an earned reward with being able to do what I want for the remaining balance of my day. Perhaps this is the effect of my parents early influence, now finally appreciated as wisdom passed down the ages.

I wish you well, and look forward to more forthcoming revelations. All my best to you and your readers.
Randy
Grace

Thanks for those tips. I’ve had a couple of people suggest the list making. It has really worked for me. It’s funny, because after I started making to-do lists, I’d end up having time to just sit there…and I’d worry that I was forgetting something, which wasn’t the case at all….I had just actually FINISHED my tasks for the day!

That was this morning. So far I’ve managed to write an “Overcoming Procrastination” self hypnosis script, record and mix it it to a new CD, create a multipart video series about the subject, and post it to this blog. Booyah!

Today’s video tip of the week explains the two main reasons why people procrastinate.
It also reveals the first in a series of tips designed to help you get more done in less time.

Time Management Tip #1 – Put Email In It’s Place!
Time Management Tip #2: Sort Paperwork Into Three Piles and Address It Immediately

Update To This Article

The “Take Action Now” time management system referred to in this article has been released and is flying out the door. To discover how you can reprogram your brain to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time, Click Here

NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was posted…

Joe P

Good advice – I’ll get started on that tomorrow! Seriously though, I can’t wait for that new CD and Thank you for getting it done so quickly – I didn’t expect that kind of response when I made my request. I’ve been using your CD’s since a cruise I took in July of ‘06 and I am very happy with the results. I started with the SleepEZ CD and that really helped reset my sleep pattern. I have since been using the stress buster and confidence booster and I am enjoying the little successes each day!

natalie p.

i didn’t even realize i was a procrastinator until i read ur blog. tnx for the “awakening”. bonne courage!!

Grace

Thanks for sharing your info on how to not procrastinate. I tend to do that a lot with myself. Thank goodness I don’t procrastinate with email or clutter in my house….I’m a bit of a neat freak. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you are looking really good! Healthy and happy.

Barbara

It’s true…that sense of feeling overwhelmed with the, “where to start with this project” thought creates a doorway for checking email or other non-taxing distractions.
Probably what to throw away and how to set up a filing system could be another info segment.
I like the video blog. Very well presented!

Ben

Sorting email quickly has worked spectacularly for me. I think we all tend to just let it all pile up, thinking we’d get to it later. Well, days pass, and you’re confronted with stacks of emails. Dealing with each email immediately (I’ve found anyway) saves massive headaches, and keeps your mind free to focus beyond your emails.

Joshua Seth

Thanks Grace

There are many things you can do to stop procrastinating and take action. Here are five simple ideas to help you get started:

Make A Must Do List

Create what I call a Must Do list before you go to bed each night. This is different from a To Do list. On a Must Do list you only write down the top 3 to 5 activities that will have the greatest payoff and then do them before anything else on the following day.

To see exactly how I do this, watch this video.

Visualize Your Success

Getting things done requires taking action. Sometimes people don’t take the first step because they haven’t clearly visualized the outcome. Before you begin your next important project, take a moment and imagine what rewards will come once it’s completed. What changes will it create in your life? What’s the ideal outcome you desire?

Clearly visualize what you want and infuse that image with positive emotion. You will find that taking action to achieve that goal becomes much easier once you know where it is you’re going.

Chunk It Down

Break large projects into smaller more manageable tasks. And write them down! Work becomes much more manageable when you get it out of your head and onto a piece of paper. Don’t skip this tip. It’s easy and important (my favorite kind).

Communicate Your Commitment

In my book The Weight Loss Hypnosis Solution I include a commitment form that I encourage the reader to sign and post on the refrigerator. That signed form serves as a daily reminder and a public declaration of intent.

Making your goals public creates accountability and accountability inspires action. Whenever you commit to achieving a big goal, communicate it to as many people as possible, especially people who you respect and admire.

Communicate your commitment to achieving your goals and create the accountability that will help you to achieve them.

Automate Routine Tasks

You don’t have to do everything yourself. Many routine tasks can be automated through the internet. Think about where you can create efficiencies in your life that leverage technology to save you time.

A couple of simple examples are:

• Online bill payment (why write checks and lick stamps every month?)
• USPS.com (you can hold mail, forward your address, and mail your packages without every standing in line at the post office)

Take Action Now

The key to stop procrastination is to take action. It doesn’t always have to be the right either. Sometimes just creating motion with a stated goal is enough to generate the momentum needed to get things done.

Like most things in life, the way you think will determine the actions you take (or don’t take). For more valuable time management tips check out my full program Take Action Now

But this article isn’t meant to just annoy you with another story about the globe-trotting mini-vacations that have consumed about half my life for the past couple of years. It’s to reveal to you the secret of how I am able to live like this and still get things done. After all I have a business to run, a household to maintain, and various responsibilities to people who depend on me.

The secret is a little known and often misunderstood principle of time management and it goes something like this: “Work will expand to fill the time allotted to it”. In other words, the more time you give yourself to complete a task the bigger the job will become. The opposite is also true.

Time Compression Motivator

If an emergency popped up right now, would you be able to complete all of your work for the rest of the day in the next two hours? Really think about it for a moment?

If you had to, if someone had a gun to your head and said “finish everything you have to do today in the next two hours or I will blow your brains out” could you find a way to get everything done? I’ll bet you could. I’ll bet you’d turn off that noise on the TV, stop inefficiently multitasking, fly through your emails, answer what was necessary and discard the rest, and generally become a whirlwind of energy and productivity. You’d focus on the most important things first. You’d delegate. You instantly become results oriented instead of indecisive and unfocused and “busy”.

The gun to the head analogy is a powerful motivator. But what about the “sipping rum pineapples in hammock on the beach” scenario? If I told you you could learn to focus your energies in such as way as to reduce your work time by about 80% with no appreciable diminishment in results would the remaining free time be enough of a motivator to get you to do it? If not, then you probably haven’t taken the time to close your eyes and imagine exactly what you’d do with all that free time once you had it.

Would you bungee jump in New Zealand? Jet ski in Brazil? Scuba dive in Bora Bora? I’ve done all three and it’s not that tough to achieve once you know how.

Here’s the first step:

Figure out what you’d like to do with your life if you had the time and money to do it. Imagine you had all the money you’ll ever need right now. How would you spend your time?

This is a little exercise I’ve engaged in periodically since I was a kid. The dreams and desires change, but the drive remains engaged because the goals are always worthwhile. Once you’ve clearly defined an amazing objective, written it down and told it to your friends, you’re far closer to reaching it than if it remained a vague and distant dream.

Most people never reach their goals because they never precisely define or articulate them in the first place. They don’t bother to do that because they think they’re too busy to do it now and put it off for some distant tomorrow that never comes.

The Cold, Hard Truth

Is it possible that most of what you do on a daily basis is just some form of paper shuffling? Unproductive, indiscriminate business that is keeping you from living a life of adventure and intrigue? If 20% of your activities produce 80% of the results then everything else is just a distraction that fills up most of your time.

I know that’s a tough pill to swallow, but once you do it gives you the freedom to start putting boundaries on your work time and expanding your leisure time. Time freedom is what gives money value anyway. The freedom do do what you want, where you want, whenever you want.

I’ve still got work to do today. I woke up this morning with my to-do list written from the night before. Here’s what’s on it:

• Write this week’s blog post
• Read and respond to emails
• Contact outsourced workers to assign new tasks
• Mix down the next recording in the “Take Action Now” 6 CD set I recorded last week (soon to be released!)

This list is sparse, achievable, and every item in it creates forward movement in my business. Everything that’s menial, managerial, or maintenance oriented had been outsourced or eliminated. Still, it could have easily taken me all day to do. Instead, I will complete it in the next two hours. How? Because I know that work expands to fill the time available for it. Therefore, I made some great dinner plans two hours from now that I really don’t want to beak. That’s enough of a motivator to get me to focus like a laser on the completion of these tasks for the next two hours until they are done.

I started with the hardest one first (this article, because it’s creative in nature and could’ve sucked up time without clear boundaries). I’m writing as fast as I can type and it feels like we’re closing in on the summation right about now. I’ll do the easiest task last (mixing down the recording because the mechanics of the process are pretty rote to me at this point). I’m compelled to take action because I have a limited time in which to do it and a clearly defined goal that I will reward myself with at it’s conclusion.

The Point

Remember, the goal is not to have more time in which to do more work. The goal is to do the most important work in the least amount of time and then go out and live your life! You do this by prioritizing your tasks, focusing on what’s productive, and ignoring everything else for a predefined period of time until it’s done.

How can you structure your work throughout the day in a similar manner so as to maximize both productivity and free time? It’s a question well worth considering. The results can truly be life changing.

Update To This Article

The “Take Action Now” time management system referred to in this article has been released and is flying out the door. Discover how you can reprogram your brain to get more done in less time here.

NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was submitted…

bobbi

thank you for this. I’ll have to try it. Know I might not get fustrated now when I try to complete all my tasks for the day.
 

PlanningQueen

I am not long to blogging and I am now finding that I need to be much more disciplined with how I spend my time. It is so easy to keep just doing “stuff”. Thanks for the tips.

Joyce Higgins

I really like the Stop procrastinating since I seem to do that a lot. I’m going to really get with it and not do more work but do it faster and have more time for myself.
Thanks.
Joyce

Well if you’re like more people, it’s because you procrastinate. You put things off til later and later never comes, or when it does you’re too overwhelmed to deal with things proactively and end up with your head in your hands swimming in a pool of self pity and exasperation.

There is a better way. A simple solution that you can use to get control of your life, take advantage of new opportunities, and enjoy peace of mind. It’s called taking action.

The Biggest Obstacle To Success

One of the biggest obstacles to success in life is procrastination. Literally hundreds of book shave been written on the subject. I’m convinced that people spend more time reading about how to stop procrastinating than actually getting things done.

All that research is adding to your list of things to do and your general feeling of overwhelm. Let me simplify the situation and get right to the heart of the matter.

You put things off for two reasons:

1. You haven’t put systems into place that will raise your efficiency; therefore, when you’re sitting at your desk, staring at a pile of papers you don’t know what do and end up doing very little.

2. On a subconscious level you don’t think of yourself as a person who “gets things done”; therefore, you manifest behaviors that reenforce your perception of yourself.

So it all comes down to knowing what to do and having the correct mental programming that will motivate you to do it.

Let’s start with “what to do” and then I’ll share with you “how to do it”.

3 Time Management Tips to Create an Efficient Productivity System

 
Overcoming procrastination and becoming a more productive person is much easier when you know efficient ways to accomplish your tasks.

1. Minimize repetitive tasks. Only check email twice a day. Only pay bills twice a month.

2. Sort things into 3 piles before you start to work. The three piles are:

• File what you’ll need to refer to later
• Trash what you don’t need at all
• Tasks are the things that are left

Do your tasks after you’ve done your sorting and you work will seem much less overwhelming.

To see an example of this method in action, watch this video on bill paying & speed reading magazines.

3. Keep your To Do lists short and simple. Write down the most important things to each day on a Post-It Note and then do them before any of your other work. By doing your most important work first each day, you will become more productive with less time and effort.

Subconscious Reprogramming
 

It’s not enough to know “what to do” you must also condition yourself to actually do it. You could try to use willpower to force yourself to put these time management tips into action. But that never lasts very long. A much better way to create permanent behavior change is to actually reprogram your thinking so you do things effortlessly and automatically.

I find self hypnosis to be a very effective to reframe your mindset and reduce the stress in your life at the same time. It works like this: if you think of yourself as a productive person who has an easy time handling any tasks that come your way you will take anxiety out of the equation and find it much easier to do more in less time. Simple, right.

Subconsciously you will want to get things done, so you won’t need to motivate yourself to do the work. You will feel compelled to take action now because of all the good feelings it creates when you get things done.

The problem is, most people don’t know how to use self hypnosis to get these results and actually going to a good hypnotist can very expensive, if they even know how to deal with this specific issue at all.
 

I’ve Already Done All The Work For You

I have developed a complete time management self hypnosis system designed to help you overcome procrastination, manage your time better, and get things done. Right now it even includes a bonus DVD with 21 time management tips I’ve put together that have the potential to totally revolutionize your quality of life and make you a happier, more successful, more productive person.

Discover how to Take Action Now and learn how easy it can be to…

As a result of helping my coaching clients to write and self publish their own books over at www.YourBookInAMonth.com I’ve actually gotten better at this process myself. They say the teacher learns the most and I’ve found this to be true.

The book I’ve been writing and editing for the past couple of weeks, “Cruise Ship Speaking“,  has turned into a case study for these techniques. I’ve tracked how many days and how much time it actually took to write this book. And here are the results:

Writing: 20 hours over 7 days
Editing: 16 hours over 3 days

As you can see, the editing took almost as long as the writing.
I think this is because as I went though the printout of the first draft I noticed areas that:

• needed to be expanded

• were covered more than once

• were unclear

• were out of order

That first draft took about 12 hours to revise. Then I printed out the second draft and whizzed through it in about four hours. Mostly nit-picky stuff like typos. Now that the last day of editing is done it’s off to the proofreader’s and on to the layout artist’s.

I have been tracking all of this to help demystify the process of writing and self publishing your own book. Every speaker should have their own book. Unfortunately, there’s so much bad information out there about how to go about this process that it can get downright overwhelming and confusing. It doesn’t have to be that way. Stick with me throughout the rest of this self publishing process and you’ll see just how easy it can be.

In the next post I’ll show you two different concepts for the cover art and let you vote on which one you think should make it onto the book! Fun

Total time invested today: 4 hours

I have to say, this is my least favorite part of the book writing and self publishing process. Like most speakers, I am extroverted and emotional. I do not particularly enjoy spending all day nit-picking at details, yet that is exactly what has to happen to get this book into shape.

Yes, I could have outsourced the editing to a professional. I will actually. But not in the first go around. I feel strongly that the first pass should be done by the author personally so as to maintain the voice and perspective intended when writing it.

Remember, I do not advocate having your book ghost written. The value in having your own book as a speaker comes in part from getting people familiar with your own unique voice and personality. If you have your book ghost written then you will miss out on that opportunity to connect with your reader.

I will have my book proof read, laid out, and designed by outsourced professionals. But I will write and edit it myself. I suggest you do the same. It takes more effort to do it this way, absolutely. But when you think long term about the business building benefits then the rewards far outweigh the effort.

Every speaker should have their own book. Most know this but few do because it’s not easy. I can show you how to streamline the process, make it more efficient, take a lot of the work out of actually writing it, but it is still work. The good news is that means most of your competitors will never have their own books and you will rise above them on the strength of yours.

Total time invested today: 6 hours

This week I’ll be self publishing the book I just wrote. Follow along as I do this and discover how you can self publish your own book too.

In the next few days I’ll be editing all the content, then laying it all out, getting the cover art done, acquiring the bar code and ISBN, and generally and getting everything ready for self publishing.

For more in-depth information on this entire process, visit www.yourbookinamonth.com

Editing

No matter how well you write, you book will need to be edited before you can publish it. You have two choices here: either edit it yourself or have a professional do it. For my first book, “The Weight Loss Hypnosis Solution“, I went through 8 edits. That’s a bit ridiculous for a self-published book actually, but I was just figuring this process out at the time and learning as I went along.

I hadn’t started with a clear and detailed outline before I began to write that book so it took several revisions before everything was clearly laid out and in a logical progression.

This time around, I’ve written my “Cruise Ship Speaking” book with an outline and a plan in mind from the beginning. That should make it much easier to edit. If I run into trouble I can always outsource the editing, but I’m going to take a crack at it myself first. I think it’s in pretty good shape to begin with. We’ll see

The first thing you’ll need to do before editing your book is… nothing. Take a few days off between writing your book and editing it so you’ll look at the project with fresh eyes. The process of writing can cause you to get to close to everything you’ve just created and incapable of the kind of slash-and-burn editing that will most likely be necessary when your done.

I’ve taken a few days off from this project myself since I finished writing it last week and now feel ready to see what it is I actually wrote. I’ve just printed everything out onto 3-hole punched paper and bound it together with those little brass brads you can get at any office supply store.

It’s 74 pages long on 8 1/8″ by 11″ sheets of paper. That means it’ll be about a 148 page paperback book, because of the smaller trim size when it’s printed. That’s actually a bit bigger than I’d like it to be. One of the things I talk about in detail in the “Your Book In A Month” system is the ideal size and weight for your book. It affects both the cost to print it as well as the cost to ship it. These considerations will impact the overall profitability of your book as well as your ability to sell it.

If the book is too big then people will think it’s too much work to get through and not buy it. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. My weight loss book is 168 pages long and sometimes it looks as though people are weighing it in their hands while they decide if they’re going to commit to reading it o not.

As important as it is for you to have your own book for credibility, publicity, and positioning purposes within your field, it is also important to recognize that people don’t actually read much these days. They get their information in little bits and bites. So you want your book to look like something fun and easy to consume when they first lay eyes on it. Something they could easily get through on the plane or at the beach.

So one of the things I’ll be doing when I edit my new book is looking for ways to cut down the content and make it easier to consume. I’ll shoot for closer to a 110 page book by the time it’s finished.

Time to get started. I’ve got the first draft printed out and my red pen at the ready. Tomorrow I’ll report on the results of this first go-round. You never really know what you’ve got until you go through it with a fine tooth comb. That’s what editing is all about. Details.