Overcome procrastination now

Good Morning. For the next 5 minutes, your career is the most important thing.

In today’s email:

• Enlist the big four domains to achieve your goals

• How to enjoy public speaking more

• Three small actions to overcome procrastination

• Savouring what you have

• Mary Barra as career coach

ON YOUR CAREER

Enlist the big four domains to achieve your goals

Our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and resources are the four big domains to achieve our goals. These domains interact and form feedback loops with one another.

EXAMPLE: Edward wants to improve selling by phone’

If in doubt, start with the domain of Behaviors. Action begets action. Working on all four domains provides excellent momentum to achieve your goals.

COMMUNICATION

How to enjoy public speaking more

I didn’t enjoy public speaking until my early thirties. I had done plenty for work and at social events, but would become very nervous beforehand. What changed for me was being MC at a wedding and realising nobody in the audience cared that much how I performed. All I had to do was some preparation and not be offensive. And, like nearly any speaker, I had the good wishes of the audience because people empathise that public speaking can be stressful. The bar is low to be rated as having done a good job. There is much less pressure to do well than we fear. Here is a roadmap to excel and enjoy public speaking more:

Mindset

• Know that nearly all your audience wants you to do well

• Imagine liking your audience before you commence speaking

Content

• Match your content to the interests and mood of your audience

• Be succinct

Stagecraft

• Mentally divide the audience into quadrants. Slowly shift your eye gaze, in turn, to the middle of each quadrant

• Gesticulate slowly with your arms and hands. The larger the audience, the larger the movement

PRODUCTIVITY

Three small actions to overcome procrastination

In an earlier CareerCoacha edition, we discussed how goals of perfection were a major cause of procrastination. Instead, having a goal of excellence was more realistic, enjoyable, and productive. Here are three more actions to overcome procrastination:

1. Do the most enjoyable part of a task first: e.g. watching YouTubes of what customers don’t like about your competitor’s product

2. Set a tiny goal: spend three minutes brainstorming the order of tasks you will perform

3. Have an accountability partner: e.g. ‘Sarah, I’m buying you lunch today if I haven’t made five sales calls in the next hour’

Overcoming procrastination is about gaining and keeping momentum. Action begets action.

1 MINUTE TO HAPPINESS

Savoring what you have

Savoring is when we pause and appreciate what we have. This could be our health, interesting work, or our relationships. It could be a safe and warm apartment.

Savoring increases our satisfaction and happiness. Instead of wanting more, it’s rational to want what we have. Savoring is part of leading a wise life.

GET SMARTER

How we sustain change

Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors in 2016. She started as an eighteen-year-old with the company, inspecting hoods and checking fender panels. Barra subsequently trained as an electrical engineer and completed an MBA at Stanford. She has been included in the TIME100 list of most influential people in the world. A sample of her career wisdom:

If you have specific feedback or anything interesting you’d like to share, please let us know by replying to this email.

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