7 Steps to Beat Procrastination. It has been estimated that 20 percent of us have a chronic problem with procrastination. Why do we delay, defer, postpone or schedule? Who knows? What’s important is that if you are ready (or if you think you might be ready tomorrow), then here are a few ways to help you get through the sometimes debilitating habit of procrastination. 1. Admit You Have a Problem The first step to avoiding procrastination is like many other situations: admit that you have a problem. You might find that you are not deliberately avoiding this work; you just can’t seem to find the time to get it done. 2. Next start your day off with a “to do” list that prioritizes your most important tasks. These might include leaving an important item on your list until the last minutes of the day when you run out of time to complete it or starting in on a job and then getting up for a cup of coffee or checking your e-mails before you get it done. Creating Your Habit Environment.
By Leo Babauta Let’s imagine that you’re going to change your diet — you’re going from eating chips, ho-hos, Double Down Chicken Sandwiches and taco “meat” in a Dorito shell, to eating fruits and veggies and beans and nuts and whole grains.
Sound easy? But when you’re stressed and tired from a long day of rebranding meetings and obsessively checking your Facebook, and don’t have much willpower, you’ll reach for the easiest snack, the thing you’re used to and comfortable with. And when your co-workers or family breaks out the cupcakes or home-made cookies, you can’t resist the temptation, just this once. Old habits are hard to break for many reasons, but your environment is one of the biggest. Some examples: Go to a retreat and eat nothing but the delicious and healthy vegetarian food they make for you — that’s easy. There might be some of us who can overcome a more difficult habit environment, but why make it so much harder on yourself? Ways to Change Your Habit Environment. How To Set Better Goals: Avoid Four Common Mistakes. Badly set goals can degrade performance, motivate unethical behaviour and damage organisations.
It’s no accident that goal-setting pervades so many areas of modern life. There are hundreds of research studies going back decades showing that setting goals can increase people’s performance. Most have heard the goal-setting mantra that goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (S.M.A.R.T.); but few recognise the dangers of poor goal-setting and the unintended consequences that can follow. Here’s how to avoid four common problems with goal-setting, which are highlighted by Ordonez et al. (2009) at the Harvard Business School. 1.
The problem with setting goals that are too specific is that they can bias people’s behaviour in unintended ways. If you use goals to effectively tell a university professor that all that’s important is publishing articles, then what is going to happen to her teaching? Better goals: keep them somewhat vague. Take college and university courses online completely free.
In recent years massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a trend in online education.
The term was coined in 2008 by David Cormier, manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island. The first MOOC was created the previous year, at Utah State University. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of courses available online at no cost. You can study anything from business to zoology in your own home at no cost. MOOCs are designed like college courses but are available to anyone anywhere in the world, at no cost. Coursera is perhaps the most well-known of the online education facilitators. EdX is another non-profit course site created by founding partners Harvard and MIT and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has their own open courseware, where most of the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects are available on the Web, free of charge. European institutions are also getting in on the act. Free Online Course Materials.