Just Do It!
In November, I challenged myself to try to apply Jim Rohn’s life lessons as an experiment to see if it will improve my life. My gauge was my income going up. I am well aware that there are many other ways of measuring success but income is a good objective measure.
I am now on day 147, and my net worth has not increased yet. I have 33 more days to go, I am very hopeful but oh boy, this is very hard.
I know what I need to do but I just don’t feel like doing any of the tasks I should be doing. I am physically able to carry out the tasks but my body just doesn’t want to move!
This is my solution to this. Everytime I need to do a task, I will be asking myself if I need to do it. If it will bring me closer to achieving my goal then I will do it even if I don’t feel like doing it at all. An example of this today is doing the laundry. I need to do it because I have 3 baskets full and I will be working a few days in a row this week. So I asked myself, “Do I need to do it?”. The answer is yes, so I got up, put the first load in the washer. After that’s finished in the wash, I put it in the dryer and repeated this 3 times until all 3 baskets were empty. The whole time of doing this task was torture. I was like a robot. I was physically moving but I didn’t want what I was doing. I wanted to be sitting and watching youtube videos instead. But I carried on and just performed the task.
Even creating this blog post right now, I don’t feel like doing it but I am just typing anyways because I need to do it. I know I need to do this if I want to improve my life.
When I am imagining the best version of myself, I would be someone who acts on my goals with urgency. No overthinking, no delay. Very responsible and dependable. I would take action even if I don’t feel like working. But right now, I am not on autopilot for those characteristics yet, I just have to keep moving and carrying out the tasks even though my emotion is completely detached from it.
I am listening to the book 5-Second Rule by Mel Robbins. She says that if you need to do something, you need to act within 5 seconds or else your mind will talk you out of it. So if I need to do the dishes after I have eaten, right after thinking of washing the dishes, I need to get up and start gathering the dishes and putting them in the sink within 5-seconds, or else I will end up delaying the task because my mind will start giving me reasons as to why I can’t wash the dishes yet. In my case, it would be that I need to delay it because I just came from a 12-hour shift and I am very tired so I deserve to watch a few youtube videos after dinner. Which has been proven to be a very bad decision because I will end up watching videos for 1-2 hours. At that point it will be close to midnight and then I will have to rush to wash the dishes and clean up and go to bed. If I had only gotten up within 5 seconds from the time I thought of washing the dishes, I would have avoided wasting 2 hours of my time and have been able to sleep earlier for the next day.
The 5-second rule is also beneficial if I wanted to avoid doing unnecessary tasks. Take for example my addiction to mindlessly browsing the internet. Once I have the thought of picking up my phone and watching youtube videos, I will count 5-4-3-2-1, during that time I am giving myself time to talk myself out of wasting time. I am giving myself time to stay away from the temptation.
I am very hopeful that in the next 30 days, I will be very proud of myself. I need to just do it. Keeping in mind that I will never feel like doing anything that will bring me closer to my goal of being more productive at work and home.
So help me God.
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