The Habit of Starting

The biggest reason people fail at creating and sticking to new habits is that they don’t keep doing it. That seems obvious: if you don’t keep doing a habit, it won’t really become a habit. So what’s the solution to this obvious problem? Find a way to keep doing it.

When you look at it this way, the key to forming a habit is not how much you do of the habit each day (exercise for 30 minutes, write 1,000 words, etc.), but whether you do it at all. So the key is just getting started.

Let me emphasize that: the key to forming a habit is starting each day.

What do I mean by starting? If you want to form the habit of meditation, just get your butt on the cushion each day. If you want to form the habit of running, just lace up your shoes and get out the door. If you want to form the habit of writing, just sit down, close everything else on your computer, and start typing.

Form the habit of starting, and you’ll get good at forming habits.

How to Start When You Face Resistance

Form the habit of starting — easier said than done, right? What happens when you wake up and don’t feel like doing yoga or your beach body exercise DVD?

Let’s first take a look at why you don’t feel like starting. It’s usually for one or both of these reasons:

1. You are comfortable with what you’re doing (reading online, probably), and the habit is less comfortable (it’s too hard). We cling to the comfortable.
2. It’s too difficult to get started — to do the habit, you have to get a bunch of equipment out of your garage, or drive 20 minutes to the gym, or go get a bunch of ingredients, etc.

Those are the main two reasons, and really they’re the same thing.

So the solution is to make it easier and more comfortable to do the habit, and easier to get started. Some ways to do that:

• Focus on the smallest thing — just getting started. You don’t have to do even 5 minutes — just start. That’s so easy it’s hard to say no.
• Prepare everything you need to get started earlier. So if you need some equipment, get it ready well before you have to start, like the evening before, or in the morning if you have to do it in the afternoon, or at least an hour before. Then when it’s time to start, there is no barrier.
• Make the habit something you can do where you are, instead of having to drive there.
• If you have to drive or walk somewhere, have someone meet you there. Then you’re less likely to stay home (or at work), and more likely to go — and going there is the same thing as getting started. This works because you’re making it less comfortable to not start — the idea of leaving a friend waiting for you at the gym or park is not a comfortable one.
• Tell people you’re going to do the habit of starting your habit every day for 30 days. Having this kind of accountability motivates you to get started, and makes it less comfortable not to start.
• Start with the easiest version of the habit, so that it’s easy to start. For example, if you want to form the habit of reading, don’t start with Joyce, but with Grisham or Stephen King or whoever you find fun and easy to read. If you want to start yoga, don’t start with a really challenging routine, but an easy series of sun salutations.

Make it as easy as possible to start, and hard to not start. Tell yourself that all you have to do is lace up your shoes and get out the door, and you’ll have a hard time saying no. Once you’ve started, you’ll feel good and probably want to continue (though that’s not a necessity).

The start is a sunrise: a moment of brilliance that signals something joyful has arrived. Learn to love that moment of brilliance, and your habit troubles fade like the night.

Post written by Leo Babauta in http://zenhabits.net/starting/

How to Overcome Procrastination?

1) First thing you should do is to view and focus on the dateline of that job.
If we can create an anxiety about the dateline, then all of our energy will be focused on the result (which can make us work fast without have to wait longer). However, if we are not anxious about the dateline, all of our anxiety will be directed to the creative part. In other words, our time and effort will be wasted on non-most-priority task.


2) Secondly, by creating the sense of accountability (and fear) !
In this case, we should imagine our self being pushed to give sudden presentation in front of big audience. When we are able to create this feeling, we would then light fire under our ass to carry out the task as fast and as perfect as possible. Again, all of this can happen provided that you have the strong feeling of not wanting to disappoint a large number of our expectant audiences (by not completing our task in time).


3) Thirdly, by focusing on the concrete task (than the abstract task). We also have to break the project down into smaller concrete tasks. Studies have shown that any concrete physical things that resulted from the working progress can multiply the person's effort and focus to complete the job. Therefore, you should (physically or psychologically) be able to be as creative as possible to transform any of your abstract tasks into concrete parts. 


4) Fourthly, by working on that project a little bit each day.  By this, its mean that we should start as soon as it is assigned! ! (1 hour or so, is fine). After making your starting move, you can stop working and do other things. You just have to come back to that project every day for a small amount of efforts and little bit of continuation. By doing this, you will be having a progress over time although in slow momentum. Moreover, it should be noted that once your brain start to work on a specific problem or project, it doesn’t stop.

Thus, the most important point is that, you just need to pull yourself to do the task now despite of unbearable small amount of effort as you can imagine. :)

TWO IMPORTANT LESSONS

According to Adam Khoo in his book, Secrets of Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses, there are two important lessons that we should embrace in order to be successful millionaire of entrepreneur.

The first lesson is that rejection was part of the game. If you want to make a sale, you have to got to be rejected an average number of times. For example, if it took ten "NOs" for you to make sale and earn a commission of $100, then each "NO" was worth $ 10. Once you overcome that fear of being rejected, you will start taking massive action for any goal that you wanted to achieve.

Second most important lesson that we should have is that if you don't like the idea of SELLING, you will never ever be rich. To achieve ANYTHING in life, you have to get out there and sell!
 
  If you want to land a lucrative job, you have to be able to sell yourself during the interview. If you want to get a promotion, you have to sell your ideas and yourself  to the top management. It is not always the smartest and the most hardworking person who gets the promotion. Rather, it is the person who is able to sell himself to his bosses. The reason why there are so many individuals with Masters degrees and PhDs who never become rich and successful is because they don't know how to sell.

WHAT IS METHODOLOGY?

According to Glenn Fox, methodology is the study of process if appraisal of theories that are purported to be scientific.

To simplify, methodology can be defined as theory of theories, which is in this case it is closely related to epistemology.

While epistemology here means study or the theory of origins, the nature, the methods of authentication and the limits of knowledge. Therefore, in relation to epistemology of economics, firstly it can mean the concern with the sources of economist knowledge about human social interaction.

Secondly, it concern with the scope of the application of that knowledge and thirdly it can mean the protocol through which knowledge is validated.