When we imagine that we are overwhelmed by outside events ( options/ tough choices/ situations/ ways of making money/ etc), it is an illusion, because the brain doesn't even function that way. Only a thought believed can produce a feeling of overwhelm.

What do I do when I'm overwhelmed?

Don't hold your happiness hostage to the achievement of long term goal. If you do that, your happiness is always in the future. Always a hostage and the future doesn't exists right now, does it? Don't create your year, create your day. Figure out the perfect day and then live it. The year will take care of itself. So will your life.

Process goals should be very precise (i.e. two miles, twenty-one pushups, $23000 in sales proposals this week).

You have to make your goals shorter. Short-term "process goals" that you always finished and felt good about. Procees goals can encourage us to enjoy the present moment. They are brief and achievable. Set up process goals and fun tasks and projects so we never had to worry about the future outcome goals.The best futures get created in the present moment. The worst thing is to be so worried about your future that you miss creating it right now right here in the present moment.

Why am I not sticking with my goals?

Sadness, depression, frustration, upset, and anxiety can only be produced by seeing a situation and then producing an interpretation of it and then believing that interpretation. So, you and I can only be overwhelmed by our thoughts about something, never the thing itself.One person sees rain and gets sad because of their story about rain that they're believing ( "It's gloomy, it means I'll be cooped up.") . Another person sees rain and gets happy because of their story about rain ( "It's refreshing. It's romantic. It grows my garden"). It's the same rain in both cases. Rain has no meaning until we add it.In both cases, it is the thought believed that is causing the feeling. Something happens, and we add the meaning of it.

Situations don't cause feelings

You'll never find time for anything, if you want time you must make it.Charles Buxton

The mind makes all future tasks big and scary. So we procrastinate. Even little things, when we imagine doing them in the future, get distorted and take on frightening proportions. Because the imagination, when it ventures into the future, always find the worst case.Action is the answer, but not always big action. Try to give your task 3 minutes of your time. Small action, tiny action. And make sure the action is effortless. As they say in zen, effortless effort. 3 minutes then walk. Quit. Bail. Walk away. (if you can, that is. But in my experience, 9 times out of 10 I get excited by how easy this thing really was all along! It was just masquerading as big and scary seen through the lens of my worst case future).

Get as small as you can

Don't think in terms of pattern. None of this: "I always" or "I never" because those globalizing thoughts will never serve you. They will scare you and make you a pessimist. Keep your life creative and simple : what needs to be done now in these three minutes? That's all you ever need to ask, and you'll never have anything like procrastination bother you again.

Management and efficiency studies in the work place tell us that one hour of uninterrupted time is worth three hours of time that is constantly interrupted. As the old saying says, winners focus, losers spray.

War against interruption and distraction.

A non-linear approach for dealing with time. In this age of instant global connection to everyone and everything, your "war" is against interruption and distraction. The "violence" in the word "warrior" was intended. For although the work you do can be slow and easy, to master non-linear time you must pull out your sword ahead of time to carve out periods of space and silence. Time Warriors arrange the "chaos" around them by slowing down -- way, way down -- and then letting go of people-pleasing, approval-seeking and every shade of mood-based and future-based thinking.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

Steve Chandler, bestselling author of 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, has created this newest title for the many of us who are time challenged throughout the day. Chandler's Time Warrior gives us a revolutionary, non-linear approach for dealing with time, as bold as it is fresh and new. Forget whatever "guidebooks" you may have read on time management or personal productivity. Time Warrior is much more than tips and tricks. Steve Chandler has given us an invitation - as well as a challenge - to become something far greater than we are now. To become, in essence, a "style tracker" rather than a "time tracker." Tracking your cognitive style is what makes you a Time Warrior, for only your unique cognitive style can liberate you from the treadmill of linear, limited time. This book takes you on a 101-chapter journey intended to transmute the base metals of ordinary linear time-consciousness into the gold of the Time Warrior's non-linear vision. You will learn to create for yourself a newfound and more powerful cognitive style that will make time tracking, multi-tasking and other clock-subservient behaviors an unsavory and distant memory.

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CHARLES BUXTON

TIM FERRISS

3. Focus on your effort