How to laser focus and get shit done

It should be simple. You know what you need to get done and you should be able to just do it.

It sucks though that every day doesn’t always turn out like that. Like many of us, you probably have days where you feel like you’ve accomplished everything you set out to do and it feels great. But then, there’s those days where you just feel like a complete failure because you couldn’t get the motivation to just do what you needed to.

So how can we, as lazy ass individuals get through these days of low motivation?

Well, first off, fuck motivation. No one gets to where they want to be because they’re motivated. Motivation is something that comes and goes so that’s no good to us. We need something to drive us that works every day, day in and day out. The goal to being successful is consistency. We need something to be consistently there within us every day to drive us through and accomplish our goals. What is it?

What ever it is, let’s not call it motivation and instead call it determination. To be determined you need to block out everything else you’re feeling and just think about what you need to get done.

Being determined should also involve having a plan of action for every single day. Sure, you can go ahead and have weekly goals, monthly goals or what ever but none of those will matter unless you know what you need to do everyday to reach those goals.

Start every day by writing down EXACTLY what you need to accomplish for that day. Not an overview of what you need to accomplish. No, EXACTLY what you need to do.

For example, if I’m working on developing a web site project.

I AM NOT going to write:

• Work on the Remote Hacker project.

No. That shit is weak and too vague with no clear objective of what needs to be done.

I AM going to write a list like this:

• Setup the re-selection process for technologies and generate unique IDs for each subscriber.
• Find 3 new sources for development related freelance listings.
• Write a method which will automatically assign tags to the listing based on the keywords extracted.
• Add the generated tags to the front-end page of the listing.

Now that is a determined looking list. It’s clear and to the point and I know exactly what I have to do. If every day had a detailed list like this, you would never have to think about what you need to do, instead you could use the rest of the day’s brain power on actually doing it.

The biggest problem I face myself is when I don’t have a clear objective for the day. My mind would start to wonder and I would find myself on the third video about cross-species animal friendships.

I found this really helped but I’ll be honest, sometimes the hardest part is actually sitting down and making this list. It’s preferable to do it in the morning when you have the most energy and are thinking the clearest. That way, the rest of your day is already laid out and you won’t start watching animal videos because you got tired of making decisions.

Give the determined list a try and see if it works for you.