Thursday, November 3, 2011

Becoming a list-making freak

In the previous blog, I confessed that I'm a Post-It freak.  But I'm much more than that.  I freakishly love to make lists.

Earl Nightingale taught in his Lead The Field audio program that one should start a list of things you want to accomplish the day before you do it.  He said to write down the five things that you want to accomplish, prioritize them in the order of their importance, and the next day start with number one.  Once number one is complete, go on to number two.  And so on.  At the end of the day, create a list for the next day.

If one does this, commits to doing this, you'll accomplish more than you've ever dreamed of.  Will there be some days that you only get one thing done?  Of course.  But it doesn't matter because you worked on the most important thing.  Motivation author Brian Tracy taught in his book Eat That Frog that the best way to start your day is to do the biggest, ugliest task--the one you've been dreading or procrastinating on.  He calls it "eating the frog" with the frog being that dreaded task.  Once it's done and out of the way, you can move on to other tasks.

What's your frog?  It could be the start of your novel.  You just don't know how to start it (blog idea topic - yippee, something to write on my Post-It!) and you're just procrastinating.  Just get up tomorrow morning and jump right to it.  Before too long, it won't be that ugly frog anymore and you'll enjoy doing it--if, in fact, you love writing.  It's possible you'll discover that writing is not your thing and really it's your love of working on Harley Davidson motorcycles.

Start it today, right now, and make tomorrow's list.  Then, tomorrow, look at that list . . . and do it.

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