Download The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. The first complete strategic strategy for addressing the causes and effects of procrastination is now available.
Here are some tips to assist any busy individual get more things done faster without the anxiety and stress that comes with delays and deadlines. GET FREE AUDIOBOOK
This audiobook will help you reach your goals more quickly, whether they are major, difficult issues or little, important chores of everyday life and work, whether you are a professional, manager, student, entrepreneur, writer, or homemaker. The Now Habit will show you how to prioritize your priorities to provide more time for guilt-free play if you now work effectively despite having too much to do and too little time.
Neil Fiore, Ph.D. outlines various tried and true ways for overcoming procrastination:
- Procrastination symptoms might be used to start the cure.
- Overcome procrastination’s underlying perfectionism and fear of failure.
- Instead of undermining yourself with negative words about work, use positive statements to your advantage.
- Put your anxiety to good use.
- Use time management tools like “Unschedule.”
- Work in a more efficient “flow state” to accomplish more in less time.
- Assist the procrastinators in your life with their issues.
Table of Contents
Summary of The Now Habit by Neil Fiore Pdf
Lesson 1: We aren’t born lazy. As children, we are taught to procrastinate.
“Hasn’t anyone ever taught this youngster some discipline?” is arguably one of the most frequently spoken words by grandparents. Older people were sometimes forced to grow up quickly and tighten their belts as a result of wars and economic hardship, habits that they have maintained.
Young parents are often concerned that they will not teach their children as well as their parents did, so they will listen to Grandma and Grandpa and use the traditional reward and punishment system.
“If you don’t do your homework, you won’t be able to watch TV tonight!”
But that is the exact wrong action. Children are not born lazy. There isn’t nobody. Just because children don’t find what we call “work” enjoyable doesn’t imply they aren’t driven to achieve something.
Without procrastinating, everyone has tasks to complete. Kids never put off playing and never pass judgment on their “job.”
Isn’t it strange that we learn to despise things around the time we start school?
Procrastination is not a personality feature. It’s instilled in us. It’s a learned habit. And there are two methods to learn it:
School teaches us that labor should not be enjoyable. It’s the polar opposite of having fun. “Now is the time to answer these math problems.”
Only the best is good enough, according to school. If we aren’t the best, we must strive to be better.
If work isn’t enjoyable and only being the greatest at it is valuable, you’ve created the ideal environment for procrastination. Nobody can ever live up to their own expectations, and no one wants to begin in the first place.
Lesson 2: Make an effort to de-schedule your life and plan your work around your enjoyment rather than the other way around.
And that’s precisely the situation you’ll find yourself in if you have to make a presentation to your supervisor. Making the slides doesn’t sound like much fun (since you’ve heard it’s not supposed to be), and you’d better nail it or you won’t be able to come back tomorrow.
So, what are your plans? You log onto Facebook. You start with a blank Powerpoint presentation. Check Facebook once more. Make an attempt to write a headline. Remove the headline entirely. Then go to Youtube and watch Jamie Oliver prepare some delectable spaghetti, then watch a TED presentation before heading home!
But what if your timetable didn’t show you how much work remains? What if it instead demonstrated that your life is more than just work? That there’s enough of enjoyment to be obtained while working?
Unscheduling is all about it. Fiore recommends tossing out your old calendar and scheduling pleasurable activities such as visiting a buddy for lunch, going to the movies, riding your bike in the morning, or taking a walk in the afternoon.
Then leave the remainder of your time to work. Break down your job into manageable bits and work on it in 30-minute Pomodoro blocks in between pleasurable things. After that, you can enter these hours into a timesheet and feel good about yourself.
This strategy has two key advantages: it demonstrates to yourself that your attention is on the enjoyable aspects of your life, and the time you have left to work is limited, so you must make the most of it.
Lesson 3: Make a list of your distractions so you can filter them out and assess their value afterwards.
This will sound extremely familiar if you’ve read Getting Things Done. We allow minor distractions take over our attention and day, according to Fiore, since we deal with them quickly.
When you realize you need to buy paper towels, have a brilliant idea you need to share with a coworker, or you are reminded of a request, it seems reasonable to take care of it right immediately. In actuality, this only serves to divert your attention away from the crucial task at hand.
Keep a piece of paper or a small notebook with you at all times to take care of these items before your focus shifts. This looks a lot like the GTD collection bucket, but Fiore adds an essential twist.
This will not only help you stay focused, but it will also allow you to revisit these chores later. Take a look at your to-do list at the end of the day and ask yourself if anything on it is really that important. Is this something I have to do?
You’ll often see that things aren’t as urgent or vital as they appear, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time!
About the Author
The Now Habit, Awaken Your Strongest Self, and Coping with the Emotional Impact of Cancer are all bestseller books by Dr. Neil Fiore (CA). He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, a manager for Johnson & Johnson, and a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Counseling Center.
Neil has been cited in the New York Times, London Times, and Wall Street Journal for his work in The New England Journal of Medicine.
He’s looking into Optimal Performance in sports, tests, and rehabilitation from surgery, chemotherapy, and other medical procedures. He speaks at Behavioral health conferences all around the world.
Neil presently gives talks and seminars at major institutions and organizations, as well as at the University of California, Berkeley Extension (www.extension.berkeley.edu). www.neilfiore.com offers free articles and movies.
