man.dog.machine

Are you a procrastinator? Chances are, you are one. Thousands of people have made it their goal to stop procrastinating at 43 Things. Are you one of them?

If you’re aiming at making an income from Internet Marketing, but you’re getting nowhere, you might be procrastinating. You might be doing stuff that feels like work, but isn’t. Non-essential stuff like surfing the web, reading forums (unless its part of a marketing strategy) or reading blogs. That stuff is to work as a Potemkin village is to a real village.

procrastination has many causes, the most popular being fear of failure or fear of success (which are closely related). Another very popular character trait that can lead to procrastination is perfectionism: if nothing is ever “perfect”, it’s never done, is it?

For “serial” procrastinators like myself it is key to break out of this deadly cycle as fast as possible. Procrastination makes us miserable and our suffers because we aren’t getting anthing done and we hate ourselves for it. While the following technique may not work for everyone, it has worked wonders for me several times, so you might want to give it a shot.

I’m a member at Earn 1K A Day, a closed membership site devoted to getting fledgling internet marketers to that magical mark of earning $1000 a day. The forum is divided into several sub-forums, one of them is for posting personal challenges. And this is where it gets interesting for us procrastinators.

A personal challenge is a goal you want to set for yourself, meaning you need to know what you want to achieve (certain amount of income, finishing a certain project, paying off debt…) and the timeframe in which you want to achieve it.

The key to the personal challenge is that you go public with it. Many people set goals, especially procrastinators (many are known to be avid goal setters, they just don’t get past that stage). But most of us keep their goals for themselves, hide them away in their calendars, PDAs and on Post-It notes.

The idea behind a personal challenge is that you will seriously commit to a goal if you go public with it. A forum where other members will see your challenge is perfect for this type of “self-ass-kicking”. Imagine the embarrassment if you claim a lofty goal and miss it by a mile - not funny. Even if people don’t know who you are, you’ll feel somewhat uncomfortable as your failure is documented publicly for everyone to see. The same goes for setting a goal that is too low. A personal challenge has to be exactly that: a challenge. Aim too high and you’ll look like an impostor. Aim too low and you’ll look like a coward.

So why not take one of those goals that has been sitting on your todo list for months and make it a personal challenge? It takes some guts, but it’s not that difficult. People on forums are generally very polite and encouraging, they’ll actively contribute to your success. All you have to do is overcome your fear of going public with your goals. Use an alias on the forum of your choice of it helps (many people do). But get it out there and get going.

Sounds uncomfortable?

Well, that’s what it takes to beat procrastination: leaving your comfort zone.

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