Motivation
“Your daughter will be dead by noon tomorrow if you don’t come up with 1,000 bucks by then!”
Easy huh. Nothing would stop 99.9% of parents having 1,000 bucks in 24 hours if a precious daughter’s life depended on it. That’s motivation.
“Your spouse will contract AIDS and die a horrible death if you can’t give me $1,000 by next week.”
Again, easy peasy as my friend Penzo likes to say. That’s motivation!
“Your mom will suffer with diabetes and kidney failure if you don’t pay me $1,000 by the end of the month.”
Done. That’s motivation!
These are simple decisions we would all make without thinking about it. Your daughter, your spouse, your Mom. We would do anything to protect our family.
Maybe the ex-Navy Seals among us would may also think about taking somebody out with a head shot for threatening these people. The mortals among us would take care of our family, then maybe start thinking of revenge.
For many, owing a thousand bucks to someone is either
- Paralyzing: “Woe is me, I’ll never be able to pay off this card…..”
- Not important: “Hey it’s just a thousand bucks, and Citi (insert Discover, AMEX, Capital One…) has plenty of money. I’m not going to worry about it. And Obama tells me it’s their fault for loaning me the money for that vacation anyway. You know all the fine print I didn’t read on the interest rates and minimum payment stuff. I’ll deal with that later!”
Isn’t it interesting how different your mindset can be between coming up with a thousand for safety of our loved ones vs paying off a debt? It’s the same thousand dollars. Paying someone 1,000 bucks is paying someone 1,000 bucks.
Taking Care of Business
I know how quickly I can clear my desk and eliminate my to-do list when I’m about to leave on a pleasure trip. If I’m on call the weekend and stuck at home, that stack of paperwork will remain, getting deeper and deeper.
Mind Games and Goal Completion
Our sense of urgency is all a mind game. Can we accomplish our goals without creating a crisis?
The trick to being successful is to keep our urgency and productivity as close to a laser-like focus as possible….without the fear and panic that goes along with having a family member in danger.
How can you do that? What’s the secret in that kind of productivity?
If I could bottle and sell it, would I be sitting here pounding away on this keyboard? Nah…
But what would it look like?
The secret is:
- To live life like there is no guarantee of tomorrow, for you or your family.
- To have a clear and easily explainable goal. (1000 bucks in 24 hrs or someone you love dies…pretty simple huh) If you don’t know where to start to accomplish a goal, then it’s probably too complicated. Break ‘em down to their basic steps or parts!
- To have a sense of urgency that you feel not just intellectually, but down to your marrow. “This is important and nothing will get in my way till I complete my goal/project/task/action.”
No, I don’t think we can live that way every day 24/7. We can live that way much much much more than we do. We can create that sense of urgency about the importance of our family life. Our projects at work. Our marriage.
We just need to de-clutter our mind, focus on what’s important right now, and practice! The more we do it, the more it will become second nature. I’ll try to see if I can be more consistent with my own productivity daily rather than it showing up just the day before a vacation.
What is getting in your way???
{photo credit: Nona Faro c.c.}
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