For example, say that you’re a blogger. You can easily think of 10 different topics you’d like to write about, but you can’t really pinpoint the exact topic that you want to create into a post. What do you do?

Honestly? Just pick something!

Pick something. Pick anything. Stop debating. Just do it!

Don’t stand in front of the fridge debating what to eat for dinner. Just pick the best healthiest thing that sounds amazing to you, and chow down! Don’t stare at a stack of books mulling over what you want to read; just pick a book from the pile and read that first page. Can’t decide on what exercises to do? Well… maybe you can procrastinate on that for a day, like everyone else.

I’ve found out that little indecisions get in the way of life. They clog up my own mental RAM. For example, it’s no secret that I love writing for my blog. If I’m too busy debating what topic I want to write about, I’m not actually getting any work done. Ideas by themselves don’t provide value to my readers. But picking an idea, writing it up into an insightful blog post, and sharing it with people online gets the value out there. A little indecision like “what topic should I write about today?” can waste my time and put me in a worse position for tomorrow.

Likewise, procrastinating on eating makes me cranky. You don’t wanna deal with me when I’m cranky.

I’ve also noticed that even when I give myself a time limit to decide on what to do, I’m worse off than what I was. Thinking about my decisions for 10 minutes vs. 5 minutes vs. even 1 minute doesn’t lead to any better decisions than if I were simply to pick something right at that immediate second. It’s almost like I intuitively “know” what I should be doing.

Little decisions that are consciously put off for no good reason also invariably leads to procrastination. In this case, it’s not so much that procrastination is caused by analysis paralysis, but that it’s caused by one thing you should have done not being done at all. Because on action was taken, your motivation decreases. When motivation decreases, it’s harder to get it back up to previous levels.

So, what should you be doing right now? Right, you wanna read another blog post by me.

How you phrase a goal and how you aim for it’s achievement can freshen up an otherwise boring goal. Things like these can boost motivation, keep you focused on completion, and give yourself a great challenge that’s not too tough, but not too easy either.

So how can you set fresher goals – goals that make you feel like you want to take inspired action immediately? Here are three simple ways.

1. Give yourself self-imposed constraints as a way to freshen creative thinking.

Occasionally you’ll set a goal that looks great on paper, but you drag yourself through the completion process. “Write a 1,000 motivational post on goal setting” sounds like an awesome, valuable goal; finishing the post and hitting “Publish” with a completed version is a different story.

Part of the reason motivation dissipates in these cases is because your heart rejects goals that seem uninspired. Your mind might say “Yes, I want to complete an amazing post on goal setting!” but your heart might say “Hold up. Something’s not right here. Intellectually, I know that this a fabulous idea… but where’s the passion behind the idea? I don’t totally agree with this goal.” This can be an incredibly frustrating issue to confront.

A great trick to use to get around this problem is to give your goal a creative constraint that forces you to think outside the box. For example, if the aforementioned goal is something you want to accomplish but you don’t find it in your heart to lift your fingers to type the post, why not make the goal interesting? Instead of simply typing 1,000 words, perhaps the constraint is that you’re not allowed to use any words with the letter “s” in them. Or maybe the constraint you choose is that you cannot use more than one of the same word in the entire post.

The goal here isn’t to give yourself massive constraints to the point that the goal is no longer enjoyable to reach. (No pun intended!) On the same side of that coin, you also don’t want to give yourself constraints that make it impossible to reach your goal – there’s absolutely no reason to self-handicap yourself. Instead, the idea is to add some spice and variety to a goal that’s desperately lacking in excitement.

Maybe the goal you set was too easy for you. It’s no fun to continue after goals that don’t give you a challenge, that don’t tug at your heart strings, that don’t give your mind a much needed workout. Constraints add in a wonderful way to truly test your abilities – constraints push your goals to the limits without pushing you over the brink.

2. Plan the goal out as much as humanly possible, and then set a fast tempo towards completion.

At first glance, this advice might seem like standard goal setting advice. “Work faster!” is something you see and hear in every goal setting blog post, guide, book, and speech. However, there’s a subtle difference here that I want to address.

Most people understand that you have a starting point for a goal (where you’re currently at) and a definite ending point (where you want to eventually be) and a time span for achieving that goal (everything that goes on in the middle). They also understand that goal setting also requires a bit of planning (how you are going to get through that middle section unscathed) and critical thinking so you don’t get stuck along the way.

And… that’s pretty much as far as people get. They fail at adequately planning through the rough middle section, and so when they hear the phrase “work faster!” they push on the gas and tailspin out of control. Somehow these people wind up in an even worse spot than they previously were in. Whoops!

A way to get around this is to give serious consideration to not only the goal you want to achieve, but also the goal setting process itself. You need to give critical thought to the steps it’s going to take you to get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes there’s not much to think about. At other times you may be sitting around creating pages of plans in order to be as best prepared as possible. Whatever the case may be, dump all of your thoughts onto paper and organize them in the most coherent manner possible. Completely plan out your goal from beginning to end with as much thought as possible – create that step by step plan.

Once you’ve created that plan and you know with a 95% assurance that you can achieve your goal by working your plan, then set a quick tempo and get moving! Now, notice I didn’t say “Work faster!” – I said, “set a quick tempo.” This is something that Donald Trump mentions in one of his books. He writes that he moves with a fast tempo (in other words, a fast speed) that requires everybody else to keep up with him… implying that if they don’t, they’re going to quickly fall behind.

A fast tempo or speed doesn’t necessarily mean you work haphazardly. And it doesn’t mean you breeze through tasks like a machine and create subpar work. If you reach your goal but only do a half-great job, you’ll wind up with a nagging feeling that you could have done much better. Instead, set a quick speed. Work quickly, but not stupidly. When one task is done, take a break, and immediately move on to the next step that you’ve previously planned out.

Speed is important when it comes to goal achievement. When you work at a slower tempo than what you could possibly work at, you’re unable to build momentum. One success inspires you to have another success, and so on. You can’t achieve this rapid pacing without moving quickly and intelligently through your plan.

With a step by step plan on how to achieve your goal and a brisk pacing, you’re feel as if your goal is fresh and brand new. It won’t stay stagnant in your mind and you’ll feel as if your goal is being accomplished every day, right before your very eyes.

3. Take your time to craft exciting goals. Let your goal ideas incubate for a little before you create an action plan and take action.

Have you ever gotten really excited over something that sounds like an awesome idea at the moment? You probably started diving right into your idea without much forethought… and, of course, the next day you hit a roadblock when the high motivation you had for your idea fizzled out.

Lackluster goals often act as a mask over what we truly desire. Sometimes when we begin thinking about what a goal means to us, we realize we never wanted that goal in the first place. Because these dull goals look good on the outside at first glance, you’re prone to falling in the trap of starting them before you even know what you’re doing. (For example… do you remember that awesome looking bag of potato chips sitting on the kitchen counter? I bet you promised yourself you were only going to eat one chip. )

When you think of an idea that you believe would make a great goal, let it sit in your mind for a bit. Think about the idea for a couple of days. Spend some time thinking about if the idea is a goal that aligns up with your values and missions in life. You might find that goals that appear fresh to you are the ones that you can truly stand behind at the end of the day; these goals are the ones that you put a massive amount of thought into what the end results are going to look like.

* * * * *

Setting fresher goals isn’t something that’s difficult, but it does take a bit of thought. You’ll never want to go back to setting boring goals ever again.

Timeboxing 101

Timeboxing is a relatively simple thing to learn. First, you take a task that you have, and then you figure out how long it’s going to take you to complete the task. You try your best to finish your task in that amount of time, trying not to go over your time limit by any amount.

For example, say you wanted to write a 500 word blog post on the joys of time management. You decide that this task would take you about 45 minutes to complete (meaning: write the post, edit it, and hit publish). You slot out some time to work on this task (say, from 2 to 2:45 in the afternoon) and off you go!

When you’re timeboxing up tasks, a general rule of thumb is to only use time amounts up to an hour. If you have a large task to complete, break it up into small tasks. Bigger projects can always be sliced up into smaller projects, which can be completed in a smaller amount of time. And always remember, the end result of timeboxing is a completed project.

The Greatness of Timeboxing

Almost all of the main reasons timeboxing is such a fabulous time management tool is that it helps you overcome very simple problems.

• It stops you from being a perfectionist. Limiting yourself to X amount of time to work on a task halts the need to constantly edit a work when it’s completed.
• It forces you to work on the meat of the project. If you only have an hour to complete something, your energy is going to be focused on getting real work done. You won’t succumb as often to distractions. You also won’t be paying attention to the bells and whistles of your work – stuff that really doesn’t matter.
• It forces you to ship a finished product. Perhaps the greatest benefit of timeboxing is the fact that the end goal is the completion of something. This is especially beneficial to creative people – because they would have finished a creative project, they’re able to immediately ship it out the door and into the hands of other people who are hungry for their work. Creative people hate deadlines because they feel like it stifles their creativity – but if they don’t have anything to show for their creativity, what good are their crafts?

The Perils of Timeboxing

Of course, all time management techniques have a few downsides that you may want to consider. Some of these downsides for timeboxing include the following.

• Not adequately estimating the time it’ll take you to finish a task. Timeboxing works best when you can guess how much time you’ll need to complete a task within a reasonable margin of error. Trying to condense a 4 hour project into 1 hour might cripple your end results. Sometimes it’s best to slightly overestimate the time needed to complete something, so you can give yourself a little breathing room.
• Trying to squeeze large creative projects into a small amount of time. Some creative work is going to take you a bit of time to do. Examples of this include cooking a gourmet meal, composing a song, or writing a very large blog post. There are just too many steps to complete before you can ship a final product. Fortunately, this can be remedied by simply breaking up your project into a series of smaller projects, as noted above.

Is timeboxing right for you?

Timeboxing success depends on how you implement the technique and what kind of personality you have. All people can be successful with it, however.

If you’re a naturally creative person, timeboxing might feel like it’s a restrictive constraint that does no good. You may feel as if it stifles your creativity. On the other hand, like I mentioned above, very creative people tend to not produce much real value in the eyes of other people because they’re constantly refining their works to an outrageous standard.  If nothing gets into the hands of other people, how can you share your value? This time management skill fixes that problem by forcing you to accept that a finished product is better than no product at all.

On the flip side of the coin, if you’re a naturally left brained person, timeboxing might feel like it fits extremely well into how you naturally think. Limiting the amount of time you take with a task forces you to complete it well in a short amount of time. That feels like a natural extension of your “no nonsense, let’s finish the task and get it over with” personality.

Like everything in personal development, time management skills are something that you develop over time. These techniques are something you can constantly tweak and experiment with in order to become more productive… and this includes timeboxing.