Self-improvement

Posted on Life

The Art of Preventing Procrastination

pocket-watch-2036304_960_720.jpg

I’ve been told procrastination is a major hurdle people have to overcome. I wouldn’t know about that: I never had a problem with procrastination.

I’m not going to discuss how to overcome procrastination. There are plenty of articles out there that teach you how to do that. What I am going to articulate here is how to structure your mind so that procrastination isn’t an option. Productivity becomes your default setting, and you’ll never catch yourself putting off to later what must be done now.

Get Motivated and Organised

Why do you do what you do?

Examine everything you do in your life: the books you read, the events you attend, the hobbies you pursue, the work you do. Why do you do them? What benefit do they bring to you, and what costs must you bear? What do you want out of life and how do these actions bring you closer to fulfilling your life’s work? Create your life goals and keep your eyes on the prize.

Goal orientation is critical. You must know why you do what you do. If something does not take you closer to your goal, you must discard it. This mindset prepares you to eliminate unnecessary tasks ordinary people use as excuses to procrastinate.

You have limited time and energy. Spend them doing things that benefit you. This is an investment: sink time and energy into something, and that something returns greater value to you. Put in eight hours a day at work and receive a salary, spend an hour exercising every day and get fitter, and so on. If you do something that doesn’t bring your closer to your goals, something that won’t help you in some way, you are burning time and energy on nothing.

Arrange your life around two kinds of actions: what you want to do and what you need to do. The former are things that give you meaning, inspiration and energy: your hobbies, spending time with your family, building a business, volunteer work. The latter are things that you must do so you can get on with the former: taxes, chores, difficult training, tedious but necessary administrative work.

Discard everything else.

If something does not bring you closer to fulfilling your dreams and ambitions, it does not serve you and must be discarded. Every little thing, be it puttering around the kitchen during crunch time, dropping work to sweep the floor, daydreaming of your next meal when you’re studying, must be identified, stopped and discarded. This frees time and energy so you can focus on the things that you love and the things that must be done.

Focus and discipline is paramount. Leave no room for distractions. My work table holds my mouse and computer — nothing else. When working, I open only the programs and tabs I need — nothing else. Energy goes where your attention goes, and you want to pour your energies into doing things that offer a return on investment. Channel your attention accordingly.

Act Resolutely

Once you know what you want and need to do, resolve to commit a hundred percent of yourself. It doesn’t matter how small or large a task is: if you can commit a hundred percent to the smallest job, you can commit a hundred percent to the largest. Resolve yourself to never work half-heartedly and to accept nothing less than excellence, if not perfection. Leave no gap for excuses and distractions to wear down your will and steal time and energy through little acts of procrastination.

Recognise that nobody else will do the work for you — especially the unpleasant things that need to be done. Resolve yourself to tackle the most pressing and most difficult tasks to the utmost of your ability. Once you’re done with them, you’ll be left with the things you want to do, and doing the things you do want to do will re-energise you.

This is not to say that you should recklessly attack your labours. Working smart is as important as working hard. Sort your tasks by deadlines and difficulty, then break out the large tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. Set measurable goals and realistic timeframes for yourself. Unpleasant work never ends, but if you can complete enough of it every day to keep you afloat and keep yourself aligned with your long-term goals, you’ll have the space and energy to do the things that inspire you and fulfil your dreams.

Embrace the Suck

It won’t always be sunshine and roses. You’re not going to like everything you do. Inevitably you’ll have to do something you hate, and the emotional reaction that arises will present a convincing case to shun the task. In the face of such feelings, there is only one acceptable course of action.

Embrace the suck.

When you see yourself facing an arduous but necessary task, calm yourself with deep, regular breaths. You may feel disgust, annoyance, displeasure or some other negative emotion. This is perfectly natural, but these emotions won’t help you. As you breathe, acknowledge the existence of these emotions on the inhale, then release them on the exhale. If you need help with this, as you breathe, think the following statement:

I acknowledge that I am feeling angry/sad/unpleasant/disgusted/afraid/(insert emotion here). Nonetheless, I must and I will complete this task. I release this emotion with my breath and commit myself fully to its completion.

If you need to, say it out loud. Recognise what you are feeling and let it go. That emotion is a message from your ego, pointing out how unpleasant something is. It is a useful message, but only so far as it is a reminder of what you dislike. It does not help you with the task at hand. By calmly but resolutely discarding the negative emotion, you are freeing yourself to bring the full weight of your talents and intelligence to bear on your task without inflicting unnecessary psychic harm on yourself.

As you grow more proficient, you can do this faster and more smoothly. At a high enough level, you can sense the emotion and discard it in the space of a breath. Without this emotional pain, you have no disincentive to put off needed work.

Alternatively, let the negative emotion fuel you. Let it fill every cell of your being, becoming the fuel that lets you power through the task. Recognise why you dislike doing something, and use that reason to give yourself motivation to do it properly. Here’s an example:

  1. I hate doing my taxes.
  2. I hate doing my taxes because it is tedious and time-consuming.
  3. I hate doing my taxes so much, I’m going to get them done right now so I won’t waste more time than I have to, and so I’ll be able to do the stuff I like later.

This probably works best if you experience powerful energising emotions like anger when you encounter that task. If a task makes you feel repulsed by it, amplifying that emotion will simply give you a greater disincentive to not do it.

Regardless of the tactic you choose, you must tackle the task NOW. Accept no excuses from yourself. The only reason to hold off doing something is if doing so will put you in a better position, such as getting friends to help you, getting information from elsewhere, or letting an adversary wear himself out before meeting him in the field of battle. If you will not gain an advantage by waiting on it, attack the problem immediately and decisively. Commit yourself fully to the task and keep going until it’s done.

Re-energise Yourself

Attacking difficult tasks will expend more energy and willpower than easy tasks or things that you enjoy. At some point you’ll run out of energy. It’s impossible to keep a fire burning when all you have left is ashes. When you’re burnt out, it’s easy to keep pushing back tasks. This isn’t procrastination so much as legitimate exhaustion, but procrastination sprouts from the seed of exhaustion; it’s easy to tell yourself you’re still tired even if you’re ready to go again. Thus, you must keep yourself in a state of high energy.

There are two ways to maintain high energy. The first is to restore yourself by taking breaks. The second is to do the things you love, the things that create energy for you and maintain your momentum.

Understand what helps you recover your energy. Sleep, quality time with your loved ones, your hobbies, whatever it may be. Some blessed people can perfectly align their interests and work, so the things they do keep them motivated all the time. If you can’t reach this rarefied state of existence, it is perfectly fine. Simply schedule triggers for breaks.

There are plenty of articles that advise working in bursts of 30 to 45 minutes and taking time off to recover. If this is how you work, do it. I’m not like that.

My mind operates in two modes. In regular mode, doing things I don’t particularly enjoy or actively dislike, short bursts of maximal concentration do help. Working at a task for 45 minutes to an hour will trigger a stop for a break, at which time I’ll walk away from the computer and do something else for a while.

But when I’m engaged in a flow state, like when I’m writing or doing something that requires my utmost attention, time loses relevance. If I stopped at regular intervals I would merely be breaking my flow and reducing productivity. Instead, I set an event trigger: the completion of a goal, such as completing a chapter or an article, triggers a stop for a break, not the passage of time. Once set, I ride the flow state all the way to the end, regardless of how much time it takes. And even so, if I’m still in the zone when I hit the trigger, I won’t stop. I’ll maintain the momentum and keep going until fatigue takes over. Or until I’m done for the day.

Victor Pride wrote about this phenomenon in New World Ronin. Everyday tasks, what he calls black and white work, are boring but necessary, and can be dealt with through multitasking. But full color work, creative work, demands your complete time and energy; you have to keep at it, keep the momentum going, and ride the wave until you are done. No matter how long it takes. The work itself energises you, so you don’t have to take a break.

Energy–physical, mental and emotional–is the fuel of life and the necessary ingredient to success. The secret to success is to keep yourself in a state of high energy. If you have to do work that you hate, take time outs regularly to keep up your energy. If you’re doing work you love, work that keeps you energised, maintain the momentum and do not stop.

Productivity is a Mindset

Procrastination is human. But so is productivity.

Understand yourself. Understand what keeps you going on and on and on. Understand what you despise, what makes you feel like you’re being dragged through the mud. Set in place habits that allow you to maximise the former and manage the latter. By taking away distractions and temptations, and keeping yourself in a state of high energy, you allow no room for procrastination to seep in.

Productivity is a state of mind — and with the right mindset, success becomes an inevitability.

Posted on Meditations

You Are Not Your Weaknesses

image-13

It’s never been easier to define yourself as a disabled minority. Autism, PTSD, agoraphobia, rape survivor, any and all of a long litany of modern-day maladies. You don’t even need an actual medical diagnosis; just slap the label on yourself, proclaim it to all and sundry as loudly and as often as you can, and only the brave will dare dispute you. If you can pass for an oppressed minority de jour–female, transexual, homosexual, racial or religious minority–more underprivileged points for you. Go on some special places on Tumblr and you’ll see people competing to slap as many labels on themselves: vegan poly autistic queer pangender otherkin diagnosed with ADHD, BPD, PTSD.

But what kind of person defines himself by dividing himself down to the smallest he can be?

Every gratuitous label represents a degradation of the human spirit. It is a narcissistic celebration of weakness. Define yourself by what you can’t do and you tell the world that you are a loser. Identify yourself with special snowflake labels and you tell the world you only crave attention.

I qualify for a number of tumblrina psuedo-labels myself. I will never use them where they are not appropriate. I do not even define myself as autistic. I choose different indicators: author, journalist, thinker, blogger.

I define myself by what I do.

Every declaration of what you won’t or can’t do tells the world that you are not interested in delivering value to others. Thus, the world will not take interest in you. Yes, you can get pity and attention with those labels, but they hold no water with people outside of those narrow circles, and feelgood brings no value to the world or to yourself. Every declaration of what you do and have done tells the world what you can, have and will achieve. It attracts like-minded people to you and bends the universe to your will.

I have achieved far more by drawing people’s attention to what I do and what I have done than to my weaknesses. So can you.

You Are Not Your Wounds

image-14

Never before has the modern world rewarded people for being weak. All they have to do is stick those labels on themselves. Now that they are part of an oppressed underclass, they can organise and demand special rights and privileges. If someone disagrees with them, all they have to do is shout, “You are a privileged cis het homophobic/misogynistic/transphobic/Islamophobic/racist/nazi bigot!”.

This is the logic of social justice and the strategy of cultural Marxism. These people exploit social scripts of compassion, kindness, empathy and charity. By declaring themselves as part of some oppressed minority, they can claim that their demands are legitimate and draw attention to themselves. Anyone who says otherwise with them is a class enemy who must be destroyed.

In-groupers think these labels are power. They think lets them take and take and take from society without ever having to give back. But this is only possible in a society willing to give in. The winds of culture are changing. People are recognising these tactics and the parasites who use them for what they are. When society stops caring about them, what are they left with?

Nothing but shrieks and howls.

With that said, there are plenty of people out there who have experienced trauma, crippling diseases and disabilities, and genuinely need help. I am not unsympathetic. Social justice warriors have appropriated their wounds to wear as armour, and the siren song of power and pity is everywhere in the First World.

But you are more than your wounds. You are more than what you can’t do. If you want to live life fully, you cannot define yourself by the lesser part of who you are.

If you seek to excel, you must overcome them. Mind blindness, social deficits and phobias, sensory issues, what-have-you, these are not things that define you. I’ve seen too many people using them as excuses to justify why they aren’t getting jobs, why they aren’t achieving their goals, why they are wallowing in self-pity and like being losers.

Wounds are not to be picked at and paraded to the world. They are to be healed and learned from. If you want to be great you must step beyond your limits. Identify your weaknesses and reframe them. They are not things holding you back; they are obstacles to be overcome. Know your deficiencies, seek out professional advice to resolve them, and put in the work. Day by day, week by week, month by month, chip away at your weaknesses until they no longer bother you.

This can be terrifying. If you have identified yourself as ‘X’ your entire life, the prospect of changing it could make you feel adrift in the world. And the sheer amount of work needed can be daunting. One method is to identify something better to work towards, something that aspires you to act instead of dragging you into sluggishness. If you are fat, marvel at the beauty and strength of a well-conditioned human body, and work to get there. If you are poor, imagine what you can accomplish if you can increase your wealth tenfold or a hundredfold, and work to get there. Every day, find something that inspires you to reach your goals and take steps towards that, and remove yourself from people and things that prevent you from getting there.

Aspire to be your best self and work towards it.

Be Great

image-15

You’re probably not going to overcome all your weaknesses. That’s okay.

As I grow older my sensory issues have grown more acute. Just today I went shopping for pens that glided smoothly across paper without transferring resistance up into my fingers. When I train with sticks at full power indoors I have to have hearing protection on standby. Once, when shopping for cold weather clothing, I ran my fingers across synthetic down jacket. It elicited a screeching white sensation of disgust overlaid with yellow spikes, a feeling so powerful that it blanked out my brain. These are things that have never happened to me before.

It may not be possible to completely overcome your disabilities. What you can do is strive to achieve a minimum standard of functionality. As a teen I could not stand human contact; today I can power through empty-hand martial arts training and remain functional. When I was younger I had significant social deficits; today I can maintain a healthy relationship with my fiancee. I learned to adapt and overcome, and I’m not done yet.

The wise understand their limits. You may not fully overcome your deficiencies and your weaknesses. What you can do is raise yourself to a level where they will not hamper you, allowing you to exercise your strengths and become the best person you can be.

You are not your weaknesses. You are the sum of your achievements and will become your future glories. Heal from your wounds and mitigate your flaws so they will not get in the way of your strengths. Present the greater part of yourself and leave your mark on the world.

Posted on Books

Three Essential Mindset Books for the Modern Man

There are three books every modern man must read today. These books are not for the faint of heart or weak of will. They are not soothing feel-good diatribes designed only to part your money from your wallet. These books are forges for the soul, created to scrub away your weaknesses and temper your spirit for greatness. If you desire to live a high energy life of accomplishment and greatness, these books are for you.

Gorilla Mindset

Mike Cernovich is an author and independent filmmaker. A lawyer by training, he blogs at Danger and Play, and is one of the world’s most successful mindset writers. Among his many achievements, he accurately predicted the rise of Donald Trump, produced the critically acclaimed documentary Silenced: The War on Free Speech and wrote one of the best-selling nonfiction book on Amazon. That book is Gorilla Mindset.

Gorilla Mindset is more than just a mindset book. It is a workbook chock-full of exercises for mind, body and spirit. These exercises are designed to bring out your fullest potential by developing proper posture, deep breathing, mental flexibility and more. The heart of Gorilla Mindset is to develop a mindset that allows you to take on the challenges and chaos of the world — and thrive.

While Gorilla Mindset focuses on instilling mindfulness and a positive mindset, it covers a broad range of topics: health, nutrition, emotions, fitness and more. Cernovich recognises that the mind, body and spirit are intertwined: to bring out your best, you need to improve all three aspects of your existence. The book also has interviews with subject matter experts, delving into the science behind some of the more esoteric principles discussed in the book.

Gorilla Mindset isn’t just for men. While it is targeted at men, anyone can apply the same principles to living. This is a book for everyone, accessible to anybody motivated to kick their life into high gear.

Gorilla Mindset can be purchased here.

New World Ronin

Written by Nick Kelly (aka Victor Pride) of Bold and Determined, New World Ronin is a handbook of hard-won wisdom, aimed at artists, entrepreneurs, rebels, warriors and outcasts. B&D focuses on building up men to become masters of their destiny. Both blog and novel are unapologetic about their core audience: men who desire to escape the humdrum of 9-to-5 life and become online entrepreneurs.

New World Ronin is a lean, mean book of principles. Delivered in a direct, no-nonsense style, it delivers hard-hitting advice on a plethora of subjects: the right mindset to be a winner, works of genius versus work that maintains business, how to be a professional creator in the modern world, and so on. Every line is crisp and brusque, filled with just enough information to spur the wise reader to read between the lines and live his advice.

More focused than Gorilla Mindset, this is a book that drives readers to cultivate a mindset of success. While there are many practical tips in here, there is only one major exercise in the book. Most of the work here is mental, demanding the reader to view the world through a specific mental paradigm and act to achieve his goals.

As Kelly says, do not overthink it. The genius behind New World Ronin can only be fully experienced when acted upon. It is not a book for deep meditation; it is a book that demands you to act, to seek out what he saw, and become the kind of man to seize the reigns of destiny.

New World Ronin can be purchased here.

The Nine Laws

The Nine Laws is a book that will be remembered through the ages. But it is not for everyone.

The author, Ivan Throne, is a man of action and achievement. He is a martial artist with over three decades’ of training in ninjutsu. He is a business manager and a veteran of the financial industry. He is a public speaker and writer nonpareil. He is also the writer behind Dark Triad Man, a blog that teaches men how to apply the dark triad of Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism to achieve success. In The Nine Laws, he describes the nine laws that govern existence, and discusses how a man can utilise the traits of the dark triad to leverage these laws and achieve success in a brutal, uncaring world.

The Nine Laws is not a book to be skimmed over. Every paragraph, every line, every word, must be studied and mined to the depths of meaning. Throne writer in a highly baroque style. Combining powerful rhetoric and impactful vocabulary, the book demands you to use both the logical thinking of your left brain and the intuitive leaps of your right. Seldom does Throne go into explicit detail; either you grasp the meaning of his words immediately or you do not. While I found his writing understandable, I should add that when I was younger I read Friedrich Nietzsche for fun — his style might not be for you.

The Nine Laws is a book of transformation, but it is not merely a mindset book. Read deeper and you will see how it combines Christian doctrine with Taoism, Ninpo and Buddhism. It coldly and unflinchingly describes the state of the world and the fallen nature of Man, and how you can live in accordance with the Will of Heaven. Karma is an everyday reality, to be understood and utilised for one’s ends. To live in such a world, you must have a strong spirit, and to have a strong spirit, you must train your body and master your mind. The Nine Laws will show you how. Filled with mental exercises, it demands the reader to hold up a mirror to his life, identify his weaknesses and strip them bare. Then, naked before the world, he must forge mind, body and spirit into the apex of mastery.

The Nine Laws is a masterwork of philosophy and personal transcendence. It is not for everyone. But it is a book the world needs at this stage in history.

The Nine Laws can be purchased here.

Uniting the Trinity

View these books as steps on a spiralling staircase, taking you from mundane life to an elevated state of existence. They are not books to be read, but advice to be acted on. Once you have exhausted one, move on to the next, and when you have completed the last, go back to the beginning and plumb it again for more insight.

Start with Gorilla Mindset. Its combination of practical advice, coverage of the mind-body-spirit unity, and accessible language makes it ideal as the foundation for a dedicated self-improvement plan. If there is only one book you can read, read this one. It is broad base upon which you can build a platform to explore other aspects of life.

New World Ronin is next. While targeted at a very specific group, it shows you the mindset of winners and creators. You may not have any desire to be an Internet entrepreneur, but his approach of taking life by the horns is critical to achieving the apex of success wherever you go.

Last of all is The Nine Laws. it is the equivalent of a graduate text. It offers no workable advice for mundane matters like gym, dieting and martial arts. It will not tell you how to shape your life like an entrepreneur, if indeed you want to be one. Its attention is on more rarefied subjects, delving into the nature of man and existence. The exercises here are all psychological and spiritual, and require you to think hard and deep.

Taken together, these books form a trinity of transcendence for the modern man. If you are not content with where you are now, if you strive to achieve greatness and immortality, if you seek to emulate magnates and join the ranks of the Caesars of the world, you owe it to yourself to study these books.