Persistence Unlimited Personal Productivity Tips

Hitting Rock Bottom and Losing 100+ Pounds…Two Smart Questions For Breaking Bad Habits

My wife handed me a Ladies Home Journal this afternoon to point out an interesting article on weight loss. 

Basically, the article featured five women who had all lost over 100 pounds each and kept it off for over a year. 

Some started at over 300 pounds and had lost an amazing 140+ pounds.

I always love to see success stories like these.  I enjoy looking at the before and after pictures.  I could do that all day in fact.  I find it inspiring seeing the good guys and gals winning for a change. 

Photo by Henning Buchholz 

What stood out to me in this article was two specific questions all of the women answered.  One was “what got you here?”  And the other was What was your turning point? (when you started losing weight.)  The first question implies that whatever we seek to get rid of such as weight, drinking alcohol, quitting smoking or other bad habits had an origin somewhere. 

What got you here?

One woman discussed having an alcoholic father and having to share food with 10 other siblings.  Since food wasn’t abundant, she felt like she was starving all the time.  When she grew up and could eat more, she ate more. 

Whatever your bad habit might be, it has an origin. 

What is it?  Why are you doing this to yourself?  You might ask. 

What was the turning point?

Two women revealed that what turned them around was the death of someone close to them.  A father who died due to heart disease warns against overeating like no other warning - ask me I know…

Another participant said she compared her weight to her husband who was 7 inches taller than her and found out she weighed more than him.  The embarrassment of walking with him and imagining other people feeling sorry for him for having such a “fat wife” was more than she could take.

I like knowing someone’s turning point because it tells what she is thinking.  Being able to see the thought process goes straight to the heart of what we can adopt to fight our own battles. 

In other words, if you could adopt either their humiliation or fear when it was helpful to stop a destructive habit wouldn’t it make habit busting easier?  We are all motivated in similar ways.  Getting someone else’s thought process as they turned the corner is very powerful.

What to do with your answers

In asking what got you here and what was (or could be) your turning point, you’ll have two important answers. 

So if you’d permit me to push your buttons for a few minutes…

Think about what got you in the place you are right now.  Whether you want or need to lose 100 lbs or if you want to eliminate your financial debt.  There was a certain pattern or habit that got you here.  What was it?  When did it start?

When you know what got you here, you can think about how you’ve matured since that time.  Consider the price you are paying to hang on to that which was from long ago.  Are you still willing to pay it?  Can you give it to someone else?

And then, seek out your turning point.  What tragedy would have to take place before you’d take your goal seriously?  Who would have to die?  What loss would you have to endure in order for you to put your all into your goal?

Maybe, just maybe you won’t need a tragedy or major humiliation to turn the corner.  Perhaps you can do some visualization where you allow yourself to feel what would happen if you don’t turn the corner. 

What would happen anyway?  If you don’t follow though, who will you let down?  How long will you suffer?  What price will you ultimately pay?

I think they are all good questions to think about, especially when what we are doing causes us pain.

Video: Famous Failures Who Will Inspire You to Stick With Your Goals

Feeling like you’ll never get where you want to be?
It happens to us all.  This short video shows just what can happen if you endure the slings and arrows, but continue moving forward anyway. 
Pretty inspiring if you ask me.
Your thoughts?
 
Technorati Tags: motivation,productivity,goal setting,inspiration

Are You Not Setting Personal Goals Due To Uncertainty?

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.  — Erich Fromm

What is certain in your life? 

Is your job going to be there Monday?  Will your friend be there tomorrow?  Or you - what guarantee is there that you will be here tomorrow?

I don’t mean to sound bleak.  I’d bet everything will be here tomorrow as expected.  But sometimes it just isn’t.  Sometimes a job doesn’t work out.  Sometimes people leave or pass on.

Put another way, there is no real certainty in life.  We expect things to be a certain way tomorrow, but then the unexpected happens.  An Enron fiasco puts 22 thousand people out of work.  A car accident takes a life.  Or your spouse wins the lottery - sometimes good unexpected things happen too. :)

But the uncertain is why I value personal goal setting so much. 

We all have to take risks every day of our lives.  Even crossing the street is a risk some don’t survive.

Since we are taking risks anyway, shouldn’t we take the risks where we have the most control?  To risk crossing the street is to trust that everyone else does what they are supposed to do.  Otherwise we get run over. 

To set a goal and work the steps towards it’s accomplishment is to trust that one person does what he or she is supposed to do.  And that one person is you! 

Do the math.  The odds favor the person with goals astronomically. 

Yes, there will be uncertainties.  But all of life is uncertain.  Therefore, shouldn’t we face the uncertainty of our own dreams? 

There’s a saying that pioneers get the arrows.  But we all know it isn’t only the pioneers who get them.  Someone completely devoid of goals could get mugged or have their house hit by a tornado. 

Since all life is uncertain, turn your attention toward your goals and dreams.  It might just turn out to be the most certain route.

I’d recommend to those who haven’t yet done so, to take some time now and big list your goals.  Make a plan for your life.  Face that there will be uncertainties

.  But you’re dealing with the unexpected anyway, so what’s the difference?

Read more on this subject…

10 Tiny Things That Make My Life Easier

Beth Ziesenis a blogger at Avenue Z posted her 5 favorite things that make her life easier.

I happen to agree all the shortcuts she listed and have written my comments below her list:

As a sometimes stressed small business owner, I appreciate little things that save time and make my tasks less difficult. Here’s a little list:

1. Recent Documents Lists

2. Avery Write On Tabs

3. The Rules Wizard in MS Outlook

4. Two Screens

5. A Programmable Keyboard

Recent Documents - Although I’ve known about the recent documents list for ten years or more, I only recently started using it.  I had written a Word doc and forgot what I named it.  A friend said "Just look in recent documents."  aha.. yep, that was simple.

Avery Write On Tabs - I don’t know if brand names make any difference, but I like the post-it flags.  They make great bookmarks for important data I want to remember.  The colors are nice, sometimes I color code sections of my journal.

There’s a great mailbox overload fighting feature in Outlook in the Rules wizard.  I use it to flag my most important emails for follow-up.  And emails such as newsletter subscriptions get filed automatically.  Really handy for keeping a squeaky clean inbox.  (P.S. If you are drowning in email, you might want to give Speedfiler a try)

You’ve seen my enthusiastic recommendation for 2 monitors.  Dual mons allow you to switch between views without having to minimize windows.  It’s a great way to boost your computer productivity.  You have to get used to turning your head though.

A programmable keyboard is a great time saver when you’ve got a start menu (schwartz) as big as mine.   Rather than search through the muddied start menu, I can click my quick button and launch Visual Studio, Mind Manager or Live Writer.

Good list Beth, here are 5 back at ya:

Five little things that make my life easier

Dash Command

Dash Command is a light and quick launcher application that is great for quick launching every application on your computer. 

But it goes beyond launching.  It auto-pastes text snippets (like email signatures).  And it has some perks built in such as searching the dictionary from any program and getting to the command prompt instantly.

Jott

Jott is one of the best productivity apps out there.  Like a personal secretary, it takes notes, sets appointments and transcribes your blog posts.

I find that while driving, I get hit with many brainstorms.  I think of great blog posts or Achieve-IT! software enhancements.  These would often go to waste because I didn’t want to key it in while driving or I’d record them into my Pocket PC - which would sit for weeks until I transcribed the notes.

But now, I call Jott and insert reminders into my Google Calendar.  My GCalendar syncs with my Outlook, so it all ends up in one place.  Also, I often outline blog posts in it by calling Jott and getting it to transcribe my notes to Evernote.  Check out my Lifehacker post on the subject if you haven’t already.

MobiPocket Reader

MobiPocket is a free eBook reader for the Pocket PC. Sure, there are a lot of different readers and I’ve tried most of them.  I like MobiPocket because it supports both a large collection of bestsellers and you can also load in different formats such as text and html.

But most importantly, you can load it up with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.  It may not sound thrilling at first, but hear me out.  When I’m reading a book and I come across a word I don’t know, I just highlight it and a menu pops up "look up in dictionary." 

This turns almost any book, article or novel into a learning experience. 

As someone who resisted reading novels (as being a waste of time) I can now read a novel with the feeling that at least I’ll pick up a few new words to increase my vocabulary.  That’s my story anyway… ;)

Google Desktop

Where Beth points out the obvious benefit of the recent documents feature in Windows, what if the document you need isn’t so recent?  That’s where Google Desktop comes to the rescue.  I use it about every day to track down emails and find code components that are scattered about my hard drive.

The indexing system of GDS is remarkably fast and can pull up my results in less than a second. 

free download: http://desktop.google.com/

NotePad

Yes, you read that right, I said Notepad.  Notepad is the most basic word processor on your computer, yet it’s simplicity can be a great time saver. 

With all the CSS, XHTML and sophisticated document formatting, you can’t just copy and paste text anymore.  It picks up all that formatting and inserts it into the target document.  That formatting can sometimes wreck havoc on the document you want to save.

Notepad will instantly strip out any and all of that formatting.  Just paste in that text and away goes that hidden formatting.

Well, those are mine.  What are 5 simple things that make your life easier?

Finding Your Most Important Task of the Day

If you have ever struggled with what you should do here’s a simple tip that can help.

We know we are supposed to first focus on our top priority.  But sometimes determining which is the top priority, that’s the $1,000,000 question.  

I know when I’m stuck between two or more top priorities, I get stressed and often it takes much longer to start.  So here’s a trick I use to sometimes find out what I should be doing so I can get to work.

It’s pretty simple really.

1.  Take the tasks that are on your immediate mind, write them all down.   You don’t have to spend an hour doing this, spend five minutes if you’ve got it.

2.  Rank each task for DIFFICULTY:   You might say that taking out the garbage is a 2, while sitting and writing 3 pages of your book is a 9.

3.  Then, simply pick the most difficult task on your list and get to work.

Odds are, the task you feel is most difficult is also your most important. We have a tendency to put off tasks that we feel are most difficult. But tough work is also what brings the highest value. We get more rewards for completing the tasks other We get a lot of benefits from doing the most important tasks on on our list. We might be paid higher, we might receive more love or more commitment or more energy.

Do you have any unique ways of divining your most important action of the day?  If so, feel free to let us know about it in the comments below. :)

Power Posts from March ‘08

Today being the number 1 fools day of the year brings to close a cold and windy March. And March, although a tough month, was good for the self-development posts here on Persistence Unlimited. (How’s that for a segue?)
Here are 5 of my favorites:

The Little Roomba That Could; Or 5 Reasons Why Persistence [...]

Joshua Radin Turns Lemons Into Lemonade

Indie/Folk Music fans may be familiar with the artist Joshua Radin. He’s got a quiet, but emotional music style reminiscent of Elliot Smith and Damien Rice. But there’s a secret about his music style you may not know…
Joshua Radin says when he was living in a small apartment, he had a problem with his [...]