“You will struggle to focus until you give yourself a clear deadline.”
Please read that quote again. Family that is one of the biggest mind hacks to focus.
A clear and definite deadline. Having to accomplish something by a particular time really makes us time conscious. Also, it gives us a shocking revelation about who we are as individuals.
Let’s dig into this
Deadlines Make Us Time Conscious
We can really waste some time as humans. You could say that we don’t value time. While that’s true, I believe that it’s equally true that we don’t accurately measure time. We don’t feel the real weight of time. That’s why we find ourselves saying often that our time has gotten away from us.
“Having a deadline makes us realize that our time is finite” – Unknown
I believe that our innate desire to live somewhat on autopilot is the main reason that we find it so easy to lose focus. Our reticular activating system (ras) for short serves to help us focus on what’s important and also, it keeps us from being inundated with too many sensory details. Details such as feeling our heart beats or knowing everything that’s going on inside of us and around us. Knowing and feeling all of that data would drive us insane. We would literally go crazy from information overload.
We love to operate on autopilot because our brains are actually kind of lazy. It takes energy to think that’s why most of us remember our way through life. Having a deadline literally creates an ever present sense of urgency that we need to get our goals accomplished. Depending on the goal and how conscious aka (uncomfortable) we have to become to achieve it, is often the determining factor to us actually accomplishing our goals.
Giving ourselves a clear and definite deadline shocks us and causes us to reassess how we are actually spending our time. We begin to see time as the precious currency that it is. If we wisely invest in non time wasting activities we will be blessed with a hefty return on our investment.
Deadlines Push Us To Create Structure
Have you ever felt like you wanted to do something, but immediately you feel overwhelmed because you don’t know where to start? For instance, you want to lose 50lbs like me. You want to drop this weight quickly. The thought of being uncomfortable in your clothes has finally gotten to you and you just can’t take it anymore. So you enter a weight loss challenge where you pay to participate, and the top prize is 1000 dollars. You really want to win that thousand dollars, but even more you want to win at being yourself. You know deep down that if you give this thing your all something different is going to alive inside of you. That alive feeling is more important than money.
What do you do? You’re overweight and chances are you’re at an age where you just don’t operate the same if you know what I mean.
Do you start with exercising, diet, mindset, new gym, etc? What type of program should you be using to train? How much cardio, what kind of cardio, what’s the best time for cardio, do you do your cardio fasted or not fasted? The questions can go on and on, and it’s real easy to end up doing a bunch of nothing because your not structured.
You know that in order for you to win this thing, you’regoing to need to drop some real weight. So you choose the goal to lose 30 lbs. The challenge is 4 weeks long, so that gives you 4 weeks to make this thing happen. Hey, that sounds like that’s real hard to do, you may say. Exactly, that’s the point. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s definitely doable. Now you have to get really dialed in so that you can create a structure that will support this intense goal of yours.
You want to feel proud of yourself. You want the bragging rights to tell your peeps that you crushed this challenge. Let’s not forget that you want to win that thousand dollars too.
This is all that matters now. You’re focused and you don’t have much time. You are on the internet searching for the best routines. You are already going to the gym figuring out what works for you. You are trying out different workouts and you’re noticing what you can handle. Voila you got a plan. It may not be perfect, but perfection doesn’t really exist anyway. You know from your research that you need to get plenty of cardio in and be in a caloric deficit. You also, have to be at work by 8 in the morning. You can’t watch as much TV anymore because you have to meal prep and get in bed earlier, to wake up an hour or 2 earlier to get to the gym before work. Are you seeing how the urgency of the deadline is creating the new structure of your life?
And lastly, but not least, learn to create deadlines even if you don’t necessarily have them. When we’re able to create our own sense of urgency without being provoked by external sources we’re tapping into our divine super powers. I dare say we become dangerous people when we operate like that.
Remember our goals need to be bound to time. If we don’t attach a deadline to our goals we inevitably invite uninvited guest like procrastination, fear, laziness, and distraction to our lives. Those guest never let us reach our goals, that’s why we have to arm ourselves with deadlines. Deadlines fight off procrastination, fear, laziness, and distraction with purpose and urgency.
