#072 - How to stay motivated and beat procrastination

Whether you like it or not we are emotional species so you have to manage your motivation, it's not a given!

In this week's podcast we feature two segments from our productivity course: motivation and procrastination.

We teach you various techniques to keep your motivation high:

- Desire breathes motivation.

- Go back to your goals regularly.

- Visualise your future self.

- Get an accountability partner.

- Respect your bio (sleep, diet, exercise).

- Work with people that are one or two steps ahead of you.

Then we talk about the Procrastination monster that ruins that good momentum you built up.

In this section we see why procrastination happens:

- We procrastinate on things that make us feel uncomfortable.

- It will affect our long term success and you might not realise it instantly, e.g. eat unhealthily one day and nothing happens, do it for 10 years and it will cause disaster.

- The good news though is that procrastination can be beaten:

Focus on the longer term goals, remember why they’re important to you:

- Every step you take now will pay dividends later (what’s the opportunity cost of not doing it?)

- Build the habit of doing just a little bit of hard work before the pleasure (use the Pomodoro technique)

- Eat the “ugliest frog” first (Brian Tracy) or do some “easy” work to gain momentum.

- Control your environment and work / life balance (when at work, work, when at play, play)

Enjoy and if you struggle with productivity yourself, check out our course which sole aim is to win you time back, every single day:

http://pybit.es/productivity

Here is what Rev. Kelly Smith has to say about the course:

The productivity course is a great help because it focuses on cross-discipline skills. We all face the same struggles with distractions, motivation, procrastination, and wanting to get things just right, i.e. perfectionism. You have the opportunity to learn from Bob and Julian who have studied respected authors on productivity. What they do in the course is condense what they have learned and applied successfully to their own lives, and share it with you in a series of warm, friendly, and concise videos.

I highly recommend the course. If you are looking to accomplish more, or perhaps aren’t sure what your next steps are in work, or you just want to be home with your wife and kids. Check it out, there is some wonderful and practical wisdom that benefits not just programmers, but people from all walks of life.

Finally here is mentioned Pybites podcast reading list:  

https://pybitesbooks.com/lists/pybites-podcast