If you need guilt to motivate yourself, your productivity system is broken.

“Are you procrastinating?” my roommate asks me. Three exams the next day and I wasn’t studying.

“No, I laugh, procrastination means I intended to do some work. I never planned on working tonight, so technically it isn’t procrastination,” I respond.

This was a conversation I had last week, during an exam period. Although my review schedule before exams tends to be a lot lighter than most, the biggest difference isn’t the time. It’s that I refuse to use guilt as a motivation tactic.

Stress-Cases VS Relaxed Achievers

Here’s the process a typical stressed-out student or worker uses to motivate himself:

1. Worry.
2. Be unsure where to start.
3. Take a break.
4. Take another break.
5. Feel guilty about breaking for so long.
6. Do 15 minutes of work.
7. Chat on Facebook.
8. Repeat.

Although there are probably a lot of problems in this situation, I think the worst is step #5. When you use guilt as a motivation tool you increase your stress without accomplishing anything.

Worse, guilt tends to be a lousy motivator, resulting in a little bit of effort but nowhere near the effort needed to succeed with your plan.

Now contrast this approach to the way a relaxed, effective student motivates herself:

1. Worry. (Hey, sometimes you can’t help it)
2. Stop and form an action plan with specific tasks.
3. Create a list of the tasks to be done.
4. Break the list down to a daily basis.
5. Work hard to complete the tasks.
6. Relax guilt-free.

Instead of guilt, there is a system. It’s this system that not only creates the results, but eliminates the wasted stress and time.

The System Doesn’t Need to be Complicated

If I’m making it seem like the second approach requires a black-belt level of mastery in GTD, that’s not my intention. A system doesn’t need to be hard or complicated to still work extremely well in 95% of cases.

Here’s the system I’ve used for the last few years of relatively guilt-free work:

1. Make a to-do list.
2. Chunk that to-do list into a list just for today.
3. Complete the list, without adding new items when you finish it.

Now, this may sound too easy. Sure, this might work for some people, but my work is too difficult, my academic program too intensive and the competition too fierce to limit myself in this way.

Wrong on both counts.

First, that attitude is wrong because this system works even better the more difficult your program is. The systematic approach to productivity, with pre-established limits, excels when your workload is hellish.

I’ve used this approach when managing full-time classes, international competitions, two volunteer positions and a part-time business simultaneously. Cal Newport has used a similar restrictions-first approach to get a PhD at MIT, build a wildly successful blog and publish several books.

Don’t tell me you’re too busy. You’re too busy not to have a system.

Second, this attitude is wrong because it assumes guilt is even remotely effective. It’s not. Guilt may be used in the 5% of situations where your system breaks down. But when you’re using it on a regular basis, it wears out and becomes useless.

Studies have shown that willpower is an internal resource. If you use it up on one task, you have less of it for the next task. So if willpower is this scarce, why force 100% of your work to rely on it?

Martyrs of Busyness

The real reason a lot of people like using guilt is for a secondary benefit that has nothing to do with accomplishing anything: social status.

When you tell people you have a killer workload, you aren’t just complaining. You’re also trying to tell people you’re important enough to have a killer workload.

Some tribes put discs in their lips or brand tattoos. Ours walks around telling everyone how “busy” we are, grinding away hours of our life in half-productive work. Whose is more destructive?

Guilt Free and Accomplished

January 2010 was the second best month for income I’ve ever had on the website. It was the number one for direct income. My health and fitness are nearing a personal best, last week I was able to complete 10 one-arm pushups with each arm in a row. Academically my grades will likely be staying high during my year abroad, and I’ve made significant progress learning to speak French.

Despite this progress, I’ve been more relaxed this year than perhaps any in my life. Tonight will be my forth night out in a row, in a series of going-away parties for friends leaving France. I’ve enjoyed enough free time to practice my cooking, read more books and enjoy the weather, women and wine in the south of France.

I’m not saying this to brag, but to point out a contrast. In other years I’ve had considerably more stress, a lot of it being self-inflicted. Also, during those years I arguably accomplished less towards my main goals.

I think that’s evidence that the burnout, guilt-soaked approach to work not only isn’t sustainable, it often doesn’t even get the most done.

photo credit: sevenfloorsdown

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. – Benjamin Franklin

When was the last time you made a resolve to achieve something, set a deadline and then achieved it? Can you even remember the last time? I’m struggling. And the reason I am struggling to remember such a time is because of excuses. I make them for everything; consciously and unconsciously. Without noticing it, excuses have become a habit that I am struggling to shake.

In this post I want to talk about the excuses culture that we have develop within ourselves and why we use excuses to protect ourselves from feelings of failure and fear. Hopefully it will spur some readers out there into action.

Why we make excuses

Photo credit: Franzi in der Wiese

A few years ago I was sitting in the car with a friend of mine having a conversation (argument) about how I always seem to find a way out of things. At the end of the debate he said something that has stayed at the front of my mind, something that I think about whenever I am feeling like making an excuse. He said:

“You have always found things easy. You are good at everything. But you aren’t great at anything because you make excuses. You would rather be the ‘potential’ to be great than actually try and fail. And that is sad.”

He was right. All my life I have been naturally gifted at sport and academics. I didn’t have to work hard to get good. But I never really excelled at anything. I never worked really hard to become great at a certain activity. Why? Because I was afraid of failure. I was afraid of trying and not getting there.

My parents role in this habit
I never blame my parents for anything in my life. I simply do not feel like it is a productive exercise. But I can see how certain things they did impacted the way I turned out. And one of those things was how my mother always told me how amazing I could be. She would constantly tell me how smart I was, how good at soccer I was and how I could become something truly special.

But rather than spurring me on to excellence it seemed to do the opposite. I was comfortable being the potential for greatness. I was afraid to actually give it a shot for fear that I wasn’t actually as smart, talented and athletic as she thought. So I made excuses. Excuses so I wouldn’t have to try.

And we all do it. All the time.

Fear: the reason for most excuses
So why do we make excuses? Why do we find ways to get out of things? Well, for the most part, it is because we are afraid. We are afraid of trying and we are afraid of failing. We are afraid of change and we will do anything to keep the norm functioning. Fear is the reason most of us make excuses.

If you look deep into your own mind and your own behavior you will see that you make excuses to protect your sense of self. We spend our whole lives developing and ego and decorating it with friends and family and money and success and we will do anything to protect our concept of that self. Even if it makes us depressed and unfulfilled. And ultimately that is what excuses do, they make you feel unfulfilled.

How to stop making excuses and move forward

photo credit: Triphamr

People say that the hardest thing you will ever do is quit smoking. But quitting excuses is 10 times harder. Excuses are the reason you started smoking, drinking and eating bad food. You make an excuse not to be healthy and an excuse not to be happy. Breaking the excuse culture is damn hard work. Here are some things you can do.

1. Realize that you do it all the time
As always, you need to take a look at yourself and really truly realize that you make mistakes. Find concrete examples of where you have sabotaged your progress by making an excuse and remember that incident. Bring it to mind whenever you feel like doing it again.

2. Look at your (lack of) progress
Take a look at how much progress you have made with your meditation, athletics, mortgage repayments or family weekend time. See how many excuses you have made and how that has affected your progress is a very real way. Until you can see that it is doing damage you will have no real impetus to stop.

3. Realize that death is coming
People always send me emails saying that I am too depressing when I talk about death. I always reply saying “it is depressing not to talk about it”. For too long our species has made death a taboo subject when, in fact, it is the only thing in life that is certain. Understand that death is coming and that you have no time for excuses. Not any. Its too hot, too cold, too nice inside, I’m too tired, I have a headache… all of those sound like absolute bullshit when you are on your deathbed looking back at what you didn’t achieve.

4. Realize you do it out of fear
If you go up to a fat man in the street and tell him that he is a coward he will probably punch you in the face. Men don’t like to be considered afraid, but that is exactly what we are. We make excuses because we are afraid. Why, then, do we still do it? If someone told us that we were afraid of something else we would do everything in our power to change and prove that we are brave. Do that now with excuses. Prove that you are not afraid of failure, change or losing the norm.

5. Be different in five years time
How different are you now to five years ago? Are you more loving, compassionate, patient, strong, rich, happy, thin, etc.? Take a look at whatever goal you have in your life and see how much closer you are to it now than you were five years ago. If you can say you are happy with your progress then chances are you don’t have a problem with excuses. If you are almost exactly the same then you can bet your right eye on the fact that you are stagnant because you are sabotaging your progress by saying “its too hard” or “its too cold outside”. Be different in five years time and stop making excuses.

Do you make excuses?

I would love to know how many of my readers consider themselves to be excuse makers. What kind of excuses do you come up with and how (if at all) have you dealt with them? Have your excuses held you back from being all that you can be? And how have you felt the weight of this “potential” slowing you down in life? Is it easier to not try?

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