Looking back, I think a lot of the problem was that I expected immediate results. I tried so many faddish routines both at the gym and at home, from attempting to go for regular jogs to simply doing pushups every morning, only to ditch them within a month. My motivation would disappear because it was so heavily dependent on short term results. I wanted to bulk up, and after each exercise I’d look in the mirror and see… no change. It was always the approach I took, rather than the fact I was giving up too early.

This short term attitude stopped me from doing so many things for so many years, particularly when it came to writing my book. Because a particular approach I took didn’t necessarily ‘click’ with me straight away, I’d put the notepad away in frustration and forget about it until some other method occurred to me.  A bit like what I was doing at the gym and what I was doing with healthy eating and dieting. I could go on and on…

It turns out that our brain has two sides that are constantly competing between satisfying short term rewards and long term gains (I’m providing a simplified description here, so if you want the science read this). If you’ve ever been on a diet and walked past the cake display in a shop, you’ve probably felt that battle raging inside of you. The problem is, modern society makes it so easy to satisfy those short term impulses, and there are so many temptations put right in front of you by money-hungry businesses and advertisers, that this internal battle going on in your brain has become distinctly one-sided.

While doing  my thing on the exercise bike, I came up with a few ways to regain the balance:

Be aware of that internal battle

If you’ve ever wondered why you’re always impulse buying, why you can never say no to a cigarette, or why you ditch your latest diet after a week, now you know what’s going on in your head. Being aware that there really is a short term versus long term battle raging, gives you a new perspective on those daily challenges you have to face. Remind yourself of this fact constantly!

Break your work down into bitesize chunks

Short term rewards, whether it be that cigarette packet in your coat, the doughnut on the table or that nice shirt on the clothes rack, are often tangible and right in front of you. Long term goals are generally anything but, and encompass all sorts of planning, tasks and projects to achieve. So, make those goals tangible somehow. Break them down into actionable, bitesize chunks of activity. My focus nowadays is less on becoming super healthy – vague and confusing and far off in the future – and more on doing X minutes on the treadmill each week.

Be consistent

Remember what it’s like when exercising. You won’t see results immediately, and you’ll probably find it tiring and hard work (if you’re doing it properly). You won’t get a muscled or toned body in a few weeks no matter how hard you exercise. But if you go regularly and consistently, eventually it will happen and you will notice a difference. The same applies for whatever goal you have. Whenever, you feel like you’re wavering, remind yourself that persistence wins out over short-term fixes everyday. And don’t dismiss the value of doing something, anything. Going to the gym and doing fifteen minutes rather than your usual sixty, is far better than simply not going at all.

Focus on today rather than next year

If you’re thinking about what you need to do today to push forward with your goals, that fuzzy future which causes us so much confusion and inaction becomes an irrelevance. Regardless of how clearly we define our long term goals, we all get de-motivated when we contemplate the year and a half it will take to do this or the six months it will take to do that. If I have to do a particular workout for six months to see results, of course I’m going to struggle to do it. But, what if I just focused on what I can do today instead?

Getting the mindset right

The first thing to consider is how you view the new year and your attitude towards it. If you’re still carrying around a NYR mentality, then you need to ditch it permanently. Forget about what goals your friends are setting themselves, forget about the media telling you to set resolutions. You know it’s a flawed concept, that’s why you’re reading this.

You need to consider the following before you do anything else:

• Be honest
  Don’t let peer pressure cloud your decisions. Don’t let the latest scare stories in newspapers drive you into things that deep down you don’t want to do. There is a big difference between feeling like doing something, and having the motivation and desire to follow that up for months and even years. There are many things I’d like to do, but enough to commit to it far into the future? No. Do you really want to quit smoking and no longer have the calming buzz of a cigarette between your fingers? Be honest with yourself.
• Be realistic
  Once you’ve started being honest with yourself, you also need to be realistic about what you want to achieve. Traditional self-help gibberish tells you to reach for the stars! Anything is possible! Hmm, no. Being realistic isn’t about dumbing down your goals, it’s about taking out the puppy dogs and fairies and turning a fantasy into something practical that you may actually be able to make happen. If you’re riddled by debt, is it realistic to believe you can get into the black within a year? Well, you tell me…

Finding the right way forward

Now that you have the right mindset for creating goals that you genuinely believe in, and that you can actually achieve, you need to decide how you’re going to do it. It’s time to be strategic and smart and do some serious planning. Below are several tried-and-tested techniques to help you really analyze your life and inspire some lean and mean goals to pursue through the year.

• Horizons of focus
  You don’t have to be a GTD fan to take advantage of this common-sense breakdown of your life. I personally, never really got into it, but it clearly has value to many people. Essentially, there are six levels of focus, ranging from the big vision of your life at the top, to your daily activity at the bottom. How does everything align up? Check out my my thoughts or this article on how to achieve it.
• My own approach
  If that’s a little too much for you, last year I experimented with an alternative method, which is actually something I still use. Briefly, it is based on three levels: your vision, your goals and your tasks. You start in the middle, considering what current goals you have or want to do, then going down a level to consider what actions you need to take to achieve them, and up a level to see how those goals fit into your big vision.
• SWOT analysis
  This may bring back a few memories for those who did business studies at school. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Yes, it is possible to apply it to your life, your finances, work, play, social life, hobbies and interests etc. Check out this post for a really good understanding of how it works.
• SMART goals
  Another oldie but goodie. Again, it’s not something I’ve ever actively used but you can’t deny the value in it. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (that word again!) and timeframed. If your goals don’t follow all of those criteria, you can forget about it. More details on this technique can be found here.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are many other techniques out there, but hopefully this will give you a taster. It might seem overkill, and a little unnecessary to put your personal life under such scrutiny, but perhaps the fact we give our work life too much attention and our personal life so little is why many people are unhappy.

Do you have any favorite practices for coming up with and setting those big life-changing goals? Why not share them in the comments or on Twitter?

You’d think that by now, we’d have all wised up to the fine art of setting goals and sticking to them, but year on year we put ourselves through this ritual of setting half-arsed, badly planned out resolutions, fueled by magazines, media types, self-help gurus and bloggers (yes, even I’ve been guilty of it until I, ahem, finally wised up).

The problem isn’t setting the goals, that’s easy. We all want to change, achieve or do something different, and you can probably think of a habit right now you’d like to work on. The real issue is rationally planning through how you’re actually going to do any of it, during a period of the year when you’re buzzing about the prospect of a new start, a new beginning.

Here’s a shock for you. There is nothing “new” about a new year other than the fact a number goes up (again) and you can look forward to another round of birthdays. There may well be something about the human psyche that loves a new start, but in reality it’s the same old you just carried over to the next year.

All that expectation and enthusiasm is badly misplaced. If only I could harness the energy I feel at the start of a new year and spread it out evenly over the entire twelve months I’d be… well, amongst many things, I’d be a very happy and fulfilled person. Instead, we seem to splurge it all away before January is even over, because we stumble at the first hurdle.

The way we perceive the new year, and thusly the way it makes us feel, is very much like an overinflated balloon (probably blown up by a very drunk person at 11.59PM on New Year’s Eve) that surprises us when it pops, no matter how many times it happens. We’re shocked and disheartened when we get back to the daily grind a few days later and nothing has changed. All it takes is one cigarette when you decided to quit, or getting tempted by that juicy bun with the strawberry on top when you declared you was finally going to lose weight, and that enthusiasm balloon goes bang.

Oh well, there is always next year… and the year after.

If you want to be disciplined about it, the new year can be a great time to re-evaluate yourself and make realistic, achievable goals backed up by concrete, clearly defined steps to help you achieve them, if only because there tends to be a lot of holiday time to take advantage of. It’s just no good setting flaky, fairytale goals because you happening to be buzzing about some fresh start. That high will very quickly be followed by a low. And let’s face it, you don’t get this wound up over each new day or new week do you?

If you want to take goal setting seriously for the new year, check out my follow-up post where I go into detail on how you can finally break the cycle of broken new year’s resolutions.

To me, Christmas is a great time to mark the end of the year, celebrate and take a break from the monotony of day-to-day life so you can recharge your batteries and regain your focus. Out of all the other months of the year, December is unique – more parties, more presents, more fun, more socializing and more days off work! To a productivian like myself, I can use the time to really clear the decks, but I can also use the time to think about anything other than getting things done.

Of course, the commercialization of Christmas gets worse every year and when you’re hearing Christmas music on the radio in November, it’s hard not to become jaded by it all. The advertising industry may be trying to slowly steal your festive spirit with each passing year, but, ultimately, Christmas is just one day. Don’t succumb to unrealistic expectations or to the hype. Having a great Christmas and new year doesn’t just happen, it’s down to you.

Figure out what makes the festive period special for you. Being with your family? The religious side of it? Or maybe it’s all the presents, alcohol and good food? Take steps to make sure Christmas delivers on those things. If you’re not impressed with the TV schedule, make sure you have a few of your favorite films on DVD to watch instead. When you’re doing the food shopping sneak a few bottles of beer under the turkey when your wife is looking the other way…

Of course, that’s just half the picture. For some, the Christmas period may be the busiest period of the year, for others it may be the quietest, but it doesn’t have to be devoid of the festive spirit. Is your company having a Christmas party? If not, why not? Put up some decorations around your store or office and get some Christmas cards for your colleagues. It may be just small gestures but it can set a much more jolly tone, especially if you’re being overrun by festive shoppers.

The Christmas period can be fun and fulfilling, but you need to be proactive about it. It’s not just for the kids, it has value to everybody. Don’t be that grumpy guy who moans every year when the decorations come out; be the person who makes the most of the holiday season. After all, it only happens once a year!

On my 25th birthday I decided to spend the whole of the next year coming up with, and doing, 250 random things. I wanted to have some interesting stories to tell, to try new things and force myself to get off my sofa once in a while, so I came up with my silly challenge…

Over the next few weeks I created a list which grew as I sent it to friends and family (some of whom were all to eager to suggest some bizarre and potentially embarrassing things!). I also started trying to keep track of everything I was supposed to do and had done (plus the ones I’m too afraid to do). Keeping a blog seemed like the easiest way to update people on what I’ve been up to and hey presto, 250 Things While I’m 25 was born.

Initially I thought the blog would just be a handy way to keep everything in one place but it has turned out to be one of the best bits of my silly project. Publicly announcing my challenge, including posting the full list online, has become the biggest incentive to keep going and to actually do the things on my list.

I suffer from newprojectitis and usually lurch from one new shiny thing (fortnight long interest in photography) to another (cushion-making business?!) as the novelty wears off, so keeping a public blog has forced me to stick with my challenge, because I know people are watching. As my friends, family and colleagues know about my blog, I’d have to explain any lapse in my efforts. Even those unknown people who visit and follow my challenge keep me on my toes.

Knowing I’ll have to blog about my list exploits also means I can’t cheat (well, not as much as I would do if it was a secret). Though my rules clearly state that it’s my challenge so my rules, I know that any blatant squirming out of a list item will be noticed and I’ll be called out. Thus ‘I couldn’t be bothered’ isn’t really a good enough excuse. Some of my followers have been all too happy to heckle me via my blog or in person if they think I’m not trying hard enough. Even if I don’t agree with them it is useful to examine the reasons for my actions.

Another bonus of keeping a blog throughout my challenge (apart from the fact that it means I can tick another thing off my list) is that I’m building up a great memento of the things I’ve done (and proof of some of the weirder ones). Seeing my achievements build up is really rewarding, a great incentive to keep going and it’s something to be proud of.

If you’ve got a goal you want to achieve, you might find that making some form of public declaration, and publicizing your intentions and progress, is handy. What do you think? How could you use a public blog to help you stick to your goals? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This post ticks another thing off my list – have a guest post published. Thanks James! Now I just have to go and blog about it…

I’ve tried different ways of trying to break and fix bad habits, from trying to go cold turkey and barge through the problem, to taking small steps and making steady changes. None of it worked because I was looking at it the wrong way round. My lifestyle wasn’t a result of my habits – those habits were a result of my lifestyle. How could I fix a bad habit when the way I was living practically encouraged me to do it at every turn?

It’s a bit like trying to quit smoking while being surrounded by smokers, though it’s often more subtle than that. We settle into routines and rituals because it’s naturally easier to satisfy some inner need. So for instance, I would often eat out for dinner rather than staying in and cooking because it was simply easier – I had enough money and a car plus there were plenty of cafes and restaurants nearby.

Another example is where you idly browse the internet, often spending hours looking at websites or checking out friends on Facebook purely for the hell of it. Why? One big reason is because the internet is just getting faster.

The same goes for drinking alcohol or smoking. I’m only a few minutes walk away from a few tinnies if I so wanted. And why do I want them? Because it’s nice and lightens my mood. In short, we slip into these habits because they are easy to fall into. They satisfy us here and now. Try browsing the internet on dial-up and there isn’t much chance of you getting into the habit of it.

That’s the logic I’m using at the moment when it comes to breaking bad habits. Either find something else to replace it with that’s even easier, or find ways of making pursuing the habit difficult and time-consuming. I have no intention of ditching my ADSL connection, but I am currently experimenting with different Firefox plug-ins that block or limit access to certain websites throughout the day. In fact I have three installed at the moment. Why? Well, if I feel like having a wasteful browsing session it’s easy to just disable one plug-in… but three? Suddenly it becomes easier to just do something more constructive instead.

That is a very simple example and it’s not the worst bad habit in the world, but this is the way my thoughts are heading at the moment. Maybe in the future I can give further examples but in the meantime, what are your thoughts? And more importantly, what practical applications can you see for this?

But I’m afraid I’m going to be a little critical in this post. It’s time for a reality check about this whole simple living, minimal lifestyle movement that’s going on right now. Simplifying is not – I repeat, NOT – just about doing less.

Simplifying is about… well, simplifying. Nowhere in the dictionary does it say anything about cutting this out, removing that, stopping doing this, severing ties with those groups, cutting contact with those people, etc. Simplifying is about making things less complicated and complex. It’s about making things plainer and clearer. Yes, of course that sometimes means completely removing it from your life and doing less. But not always.

A year I jumped wholeheartedly onto the whole simplifying bandwagon. Having spent many a month in the busy-for-the-sake-of it mindset, I finally got a grip of myself and realized how much time and energy I was wasting on junk. What followed was what I call the purging of the irrelevant. A lot of day-to-day tasks disappeared during this time and a couple of hobbies that had long since passed their prime were ditched in favor of more valuable interests. It was all low value stuff and I was glad to be rid of it so I could focus on The Big Picture™.

A lot of those tasks revolved around this blog so I’m going to use that as an example (I understand that many of my readers probably aren’t bloggers but I hope you will still be able to appreciate and relate to the point I am trying to make). Mindless promotional activities that brought in an extra visitor or two if I was lucky, tedious maintenance jobs that barely benefited the site but made me feel happier because everything was kept neat and organized, those were the sort of tasks that I ditched. For six months or so things were better as a result. Running the blog wasn’t a chore anymore.

But then I realized something. The value of an activity isn’t always immediately apparent. It’s benefits aren’t always clear until further down the line. It turned out that those little promotional activities weren’t about those handful of visitors, but about having the blog in the spotlight regularly. Those little maintenace tasks like deleting spam and checking dead links weren’t about keeping everything tidy, but about making sure the blog gave off a positive impression on visitors. So rather than cutting them out completely I reinvented them, streamlined them and made them easier to do on a regular basis.

The next time you’re touched by the power of less and you’re tempted to simplify your life just remember that though a large part of it is about cutting stuff out, it can also just as easily be about streamlining how you do something, automating an activity, making it easier to do, replacing  one thing with another, etc. Simplifying isn’t, ironically, always that simple.

Think small
Creativity is about originality and appropriateness. Sure, you might be able to come up with wacky, crazy, out-there ideas but how many of them are genuinely useful or practical? It’s difficult to turn big, abstract concepts into something you can make sense of. We’d all like to come up with a super-cool car design with cutting edge features but what does that actually mean? Pass that concept to design engineers and they’d laugh in your face no matter how creative or open-minded they themselves are.

Creativity is, contrary to stereotype, about the small details. We could all come up with the concept of a scary monster for a sci-fi film in our heads but how many of us would be able to describe what it looked like? What would the fine details be? That would require you focusing on individual features. What would the nose look like? Big or small? Would the eyes be on stalks?

Though it may be taboo to any manager trying to get his staff to brainstorm during a team meeting, or to a webdesigner trying to develop a fashionable site for his client, when it  comes to  being creative  think small. Focus your mind onto small things and individual features. Focus on innovative ideas for a new braking system or steering wheel, not on that fuzzy New Car™ idea.

Think big
Stop, wait! There is still room for big thinking in creativity though, but that’s in regard to your environment and surroundings. Creativity needs room and space to breath. Your brain needs to be stimulated by open areas and fresh air,  not dulled by box rooms and beige walls.

I never just type something up, whether it be a blog post or a chapter in my book. I prefer the freedom of writing and brainstorming on paper and that’s always where I start. But it’s not so much about ease of use and portability – sitting on a computer in the corner of a room, while staring at a small 17″ monitor makes for a very constricted environment for creative thinking.

Years ago at school, when I was doing my A level in Art (yes I did art at school, don’t laugh) the teacher would always encourage us to use big sheets of paper and large canvasses, and he was right. We shouldn’t restrict or box ourselves in. In that regard I think the ideal environment for creative thinking is a massive field, from which you can see the mountains and the hills for miles around, and a great big blank canvas to brainstorm what style of feet my sci-fi alien should have.

From the outside it’s easy to think that I’m wasting my time. I suppose it can seem like I’m writing about getting things done (note I’m talking about the generic activity here and not that book) rather than actually getting things done. But would I know what I know about time management, being organized and productive without this blog? Probably not. Would I have developed a working routine that meant I could finally write those books I’ve always wanted to do? Almost certainly not. I’m going to come out and say it – it wasn’t reading The 4-Hour Work Week or GTD (whoops, I said it) that did it, it was blogging about it.

I think blogging can be an invaluable exercise for anybody who is willing to stick with it and not get blinded by the dream of the Superstar Blogger. There is nothing quite like writing your thoughts, experiences and ideas down. It allows you to really think about them and come up with your own conclusions in a way that just reading books or having it taught to you can never achieve. Keeping your thoughts locked up in your head just doesn’t cut it. Regardless of whether your interest is gardening, cooking, marine biology, getting yourself out of debt or breaking free of the 9-to-5 lifestyle I can’t see how it wouldn’t be a beneficial experience.

And then there is the fact it’s public. Some say blogging is indulgent and nobody really cares about what you have to say and unless you’re a top 100 blogger that’s probably statistically true, but I find it to be an added benefit. It’s what distinguishes it from just writing in your journal or jotting your ideas down in a notepad each night. Everytime you post you’re getting invaluable feedback. Whether it’s a person validating your beliefs, somebody providing constructive criticism or an alternative view, or just a smartass who is so rattled by your post he feels compelled to spam on it.

I wrote a post last year giving several reasons why I find blogging to be a great hobby to pick up so I won’t repeat the points here. Suffice it to say, while I continue to learn something about personal development, productivity, lifestyle design, time management or whatever the heck it’s all called these days (suggestions are always welcome) I’ll still be here updating this blog. Thankyou and goodnight!

James wrote a post a little while ago discussing the myths about simplifying your life and he has been kind enough to let me explore the myth a little more. Living a simpler life is definitely appealing. I sometimes imagine living without the hassles of everyday life – paying bills, cleaning the house, dealing with people that aren’t particularly nice. Sometimes I wish I could just give it up and breathe. Just looking at a person meditating brings up feelings of peace and calm that I want in my life.

Now that I have stated my worries and why I desire a simple life, maybe I should take a look at the root cause. Why do I want to simplify my life? I want to relieve my stress. What’s stopping me? The things I do are getting me to where I want to go. I have two conflicting desires and cannot resolve both by simplifying my life.

The objective (if it can be said to have an objective) of zen is not happiness, but to be free from desires. When one is free from desires, he is content with the situation or the here-and-now. When you accept everything as it is, there is no need to have or pursue anything (including possessions, responsibilities, or desires) and one can simplify. There is no change and thus there is no personal growth.

A misconception about simplifying is that it is solely about removing the low value elements from your life. Walt Disney would remove full scenes from his films, not because they were low value (on the contrary, they were often well thought out and entertaining), but because they distracted from the story he was trying to tell. Simplifying should be about focusing in on your story -  defining who you are in the context of your environment.

Life is a natural process of exploring new areas and removing the unnecessary. We breathe in and we breathe out, taking what we need from the air and exhaling the waste. Disney’s films are classics because he was able to first explore different ideas and then cut back the ones that didn’t fit. Both adding and simplifying are needed for growth because the two working together produces movement.