Category Archives: Procrastination

15af for Career Changers

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This is the opening post in a series designed to highlight the wisdom and experience of motivational author, Al Secunda. I first wrote about Al over four years ago in this post titled, “15 and Forgiveness in Action“. His book, ‘The 15-Second Principle“, is one of my favorite personal growth books, partly because he’s been up close and personal with very successful A-list Hollywood stars, as their some time tennis coach.

Al’s counterintuitive approach to goal setting has as its premise a seeming contradiction.
I’m roughly paraphrasing here but “either you don’t really want this goal OR you’re scared to death of it.”

Career Change Faint Heart

There’s a lot of nonsense talked by so-called gurus and coaches who trumpet the “do what you love” mantra to often unhappy people looking for direction in their choice of vocation.

It’s nonsense because it appeals to people who dream of career change but would run a mile if they actually had to engage critical thinking skills, and then do it. Alas, some of them get caught in subtle co-dependency marketing webs spun by ‘teachers’ whose primary aim is to build their own streams of income, usually at their clients’ expense.

Far, far better for these “castles in the air” dreamers to discover by themselves, and mostly for free, that career change is probably NOT for them.

Al’s book is a guide to helping you ditch goals you thought you (or often, someone else in your life) wanted to achieve before much harm is done, or time and money ‘wasted’…

… leaving you freer and happier to pursue those goals that really DO scare you to death!

15 and Forgiveness now on YouTube

Although the original two-hour mp3 audio interview still gets downloaded, I want to present the content to a much bigger audience than this blog. I also want to add a transcript for people to skim through.

I will therefore be adding the interview to YouTube as a multi-media series with a link to each transcript on this site.

I encourage you to share these YouTube videos with your friends and followers using social media tools such as FaceBook, Twitter, Google Plus and others.

15af – Video 01 – Introduction

This video introduces Al Secunda and his book, The 15-Second Principle, setting the scene for the interview itself.
The video is 4m 47s and the transcript is around 700 words.
Click ‘15af – Video 01 – Introduction‘ to watch this video and read the transcript.

The Original 2 Hour MP3 Interview with Al Secunda

The original ‘15 and forgiveness‘ audio interview is available here:

http://www.markmccluretoday.com/fifteen-and-forgiveness.html

- Mark ‘scared-to-death goal setter‘ McClure

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Rediscovering Willpower, and the 63/37 Rule

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I came across the UK Guardian’s review of ‘Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength, by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney‘ and thought, “oh dear, here we go again. A new book just in time for those readers now wavering on New Year’s resolutions but a month old.”

Having read only the review, but not the book, what I have to say here concerns the building of (good) habits.

In my life, I’m sure that willpower had something to do with ingraining habitual behavior but I doubt it was the primary motivator.

Exercising The Willpower Muscle

That’s because the willpower muscle often wilts without a regular dose of ‘mental willagra’ (my new drug of choice!).

Fortunately, this is easy to administer…just set a goal that’s achieved almost imperceptibly.

For example, say you want to be able to do 50 push ups daily but can only manage 30 without collapsing in a crumpled heap.
What you do is start with 25 (say) in the morning, followed by another 25 at night.

There you go. You’re doing 50 per day, just not all at once.

Do that for one week, taking a day off to recover. (That would be Friday for me. When I was an active athlete we had Friday’s off and it really did add meaning to the ‘TGIF’ moniker.)

Week two would add just one rep to the morning set and reduce one rep from the evening set. That’s 26 before breakfast and 24 before sleep.

Week two would see a 27 / 23 split between morning and evening.

In just 23 weeks you’ll reach 50 in the morning and be rewarded with none at night!
And what’s next? Well, how about aiming for 60 by starting with a 30/30 split?

100 Push Ups a Day

Some months ago I started with a 50/50 split and a goal of 100 push ups.
I’m now at the 63/37 mark and pleased to say that this activity is gradually becoming habitual.

So much so, that I find it odd when I don’t do the exercise because of illness, late night socializing etc.

Willpower’s taking a back seat on this goal.

- Mark McClure

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Habit Change Step by Step

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It’s been more than two years since this post about ‘habit change‘ and in that time I’ve been experimenting with strategies for getting stuff started.

Aside from their Motivaider gizmo, the good folks at Behavioral Dynamics have also described methods for ‘following through’ on their website, and in an excellent ebook.. They’re all useful, but my favorite by far has been the ‘willpower leveraging‘ approach.

Examples of Willpower Leveraging

If you can find a way to ‘kill two birds with one stone’, then willpower leveraging provides Continue reading →

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Don’t Stink, and Get Slimmer

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At this time of year many people at least think about making resolutions and setting goals. Slimmer, healthier, happier, wealthier… these are four of the popular themes.

Some even get to making plans and taking action.
And in the weeks ahead, progress will be made, and results seen.

But, eventually as motivation begins to falter and everyday reality intrudes, a curious and unsettling thought will present itself:

Willpower alone is (usually) NOT enough.

Clinical psychologist, Steve Levinson, came to this conclusion some years ago when he realized a possible connection between habits, behavioral change and goal achievement.

I wrote about this in a post titled, How To Follow Through On Habit Change Using Hidden Vibrations.

What attracted me to Steve’s ‘habit change’ product, the Motivaider (aff link), was not only its simplicity but the fact that it relieves the conscious mind of wasting energy on trying to keep the goal or intention (literally) ‘in mind’.

Here’s a short video explaining how the Motivaider can help with habitual goal achievement.

Procrastination buster: the Motivaider

One of the most effective strategies for getting the results you want is free: it’s called ‘willpower leveraging.’

There are many examples of this technique but my current favorite is of the guy who wanted to work out regularly but found he couldn’t make it a habit that stuck.

The solution?

Devilishly simple. He removed all body deodorant from his house and kept a supply only in the gym locker!

‘Don’t stink’, was sufficient ‘motivation’ to at least get him to a physical location where he could ‘get fitter’ – and smell well too, at the end of the workout.

Can you think of how this approach might help you keep to this year’s goals?

- Mark ‘habit changer’ McClure

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30-Day Accountability Update

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The 30-day accountability experiment has finished on a high note for me.

I went the entire month of June without wasting time in aimless surfing during the weekday evenings. In addition, not a single drop of alcohol passed my lips.

And so that Guinness I enjoyed on Thu 1 July was all the sweeter for being well-earned!

Aside from the productive time gained each week – an extra 10 hours – it was also gratifying to know that a new habit can be programmed in about a month or so with the aid of ‘spotlighting’ and some degree of public commitment.

How Personal Accountability Helps To Enable Desired Behavior

(However, your mileage may vary as there’s some research evidence out there, the link escapes me just now, that suggests people who make their goals public tend to underachieve. Oh dear! All I can say is… it depends!)

By the way, this time around I did not use the ‘MotivAider’ gizmo to automatically remind me of my intention.

I suspect that the (almost) daily comments I added to the 3-day accountability blog post acted as their own reminder and helped keep things on track. It was all rather effortless (after the first few days!)

To your habitual success!
- Mark McClure

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