Do the important stuff in life and try to ignore the unimportant stuff. This seems like blatant obvious advice, but most people fail in following it. I think all students have already done this: You need to learn for a test or write an essay but you feel a bit without energy, so you are going to recharge with some amusement. This could be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, newspapers in case you’re old now (who reads newspapers for fun nowadays?). Before you know it, instead of working a few hours with a few minutes of recharging, you did a few minutes of working, if you are lucky and a few hours of recharging. The funny thing is that all that recharging actually doesn’t feel like all that recharging. Your battery seems to be just as empty. You knew that this would happen because it happened before. For some of you, it probably happens all the time.

But why did you allow it? You know that that test or essay was more important than your entertainment. Yet you did it anyway. Weakness of the body? Weakness of the mind? Or is it that you didn’t really care about the task at hand because it didn’t have an instant reward or punishment. I know that most people do get the power to finish it when the time has almost run out and it is ‘do or die’.

It all comes down to doing what you perceive as the right thing to do. But how come that it changed when the time almost ran out? I believe it’s because, at that moment, you were facing the other people in your mind (The people that gave you the work). You could visualize what would happen if you wouldn’t start working ‘right now’. But before that, you were just facing yourself. You could just say to yourself, I do it later. I work a bit harder to complete it in less time. But then later came, and you just make the same excuse. For some reason, you allow this. But why?

Determine which values matter to you

I think it all comes down to the fact that you haven’t determened yet what matters to your life and what not. You did determine that other people will matter to you when they are in a position to punish you. But when it comes down to you. You haven’t made up a system yet that would score you on your actions. When you are wasting time, nothing in the back of your mind is thinking: “This is bad for me, this is destroying my life. I should banish this from my life”. You know what you are doing is wasting your time because you are not doing what you are supposed to do. But you don’t grade yourself on the fact that, you choose to do something unproductive above doing what needs to be done. If you know that Facebook will be chosen above the work that would lead you to your life’s work, then why use it? Ban Facebook from your life. It will be a net positive to your life. It will improve your life. Or learn a way so that you don’t choose Facebook above the important work. By disabling the notifications during working hours or turning your phone off entirely. You need to avoid or resist the pitfalls.

The big problem starts when you need Facebook in your life because it is also an important aspect. Maybe because it’s a part of the job or because you use it in your daily life on important stuff (crowdsourcing stuff). At that point, simply removing it from your life won’t work even if it is only temporarily. You will need to learn a skill that will allow you to only look at the important stuff and ignore the time-wasting stuff. There is no simple solution for that and you will need to have a strong resolve to keep doing that.

That’s why you need some sort of scoring system. Every time you are going to do an activity, you think to yourself: ‘To what goal will this bring me, does it improve my current goal?’. You should only do one thing at a time.

Don’t jump from one goal to another so that you can do what you want whenever you want. You will end up making a goal for time-wasting. Focus on your goal and do only the things that improve it. For all the other things that don’t improve it. Ignore them for the time being.

Wherever You Are, Make Sure You’re Actually There
Most people are never present.medium.com

You can save it for later or make a note that you need to look it up or investigate further. But don’t wast more than 10 seconds on filing the unimportant stuff. Every second is a pitfall that can lead to getting off topic.

In the beginning, this will be hard but after a while, this will become second nature. You will feel like it is normal to not derail your train of thought. You will start to hate those phone notifications as they will seem like attention whores. Those things will only pull you out of the ‘zone’ and mess up your flow state. For me things are quite simple, the less notification, noises or stuff that can distract me from the task at hand the better.

You can also apply this to the long term. Don’t start a new project when the current project is not yet finished or isn’t on hold. Unless the new project can’t interfere with the current project, you shouldn’t even try to do two things concurrently. Learning a new language and learning how to do math will impede each other. If your brain gets tired from learning the new language, then you will have a tired brain when starting the math.

It is up to you to decide in what order you want to do things and in what quantity and quality. Just make sure to stick to the plan and only revise the plan when you have good reason to do so. Not because you are feeling lazy and don’t want to do it right now. Stick to the plan. When making the plan, do incorporate the fact that you will feel lazy from time to time. So plan in periods where you can be lazy without affecting the plan. You are not a machine, so don’t plan like you are one. Maybe revise it once a week to see if you can keep up with it.

A plan that you cannot follow is not a plan at all, it is just a wish list.

If you have a solid plan, and you accept it that it will lead you to a better life. It will be easier to stick to it. If you don’t, then you will have to revise it. When you see that you seem to fail following the plan, then also plan in punishment. In that way, you will face punishment for not following your own plan. That way, you will have a good incentive like you have when you are running out of time on that essay and you know you will be in trouble if you don’t finish it.

If you are still failing to do things on time or to complete tasks at all. Then you should stop fooling yourself. You are planning things that you know will not work. You clearly don’t care about your future self. If you know what is good for you, then make sure that your future self will do the things that are needed. If you know that your future self will be distracted by Facebook, then make sure that he doesn’t have Facebook to be distracted by. When the time comes, you probably will hate your past self, but at least your future will be likable.