How to Break the Feel-Good Addiction to Engage Big Things

How does a busy professional like you cope with the mounting demands and pressures of achieving your passionate vision while all around you, life intrudes? We are constantly sabotaged by nonproductive energy wasters that contribute nothing substantial to our success. Whether you aspire to start your own business while still working a full-time job or are juggling hot leads to be the number one salesperson, the key to achieving big is breaking the “feel-good” addiction.

The feel-good addiction is a craving for the small, easy, “feel-good” tasks that bombard us daily—sorting the mail, answering e-mail, checking voicemail, and organizing and reorganizing.

The feel-good addiction is insidious for those of us who get a charge out of checking things off our to-do lists. Sure you knock out some minor chores, but that check-mark high comes at a price. Before you know it, you are majoring in minor things. You accomplish lots of little tasks but achieve very little of significance. In the long term, it is guaranteed to frustrate you, overwhelm you, and stress you out. Breaking the “feel-good” addiction opens the door to achievement.

Start Your Day Big

The feel-good addiction begins with the way you start your day. Most of us like to ease into our workdays: “I’ll just check my e-mail for any emergencies.” After all, firing off an e-mail only takes two minutes. Since you are not yet feeling the day’s time constraints, these tasks steal more attention than they deserve. Two minutes turn into 20 as one item leads to another. Soon the morning is gone faster than those first two cups of coffee. In a flash the day is over, and you have not accomplished one thing toward your passionate vision.

Start each day big with a clean desk, free of clutter, and a clear mind. Put small tasks out of sight and out of mind. Start strong, and you will finish strong.

Engage Big Things for Big Results

What you engage and focus on is where you will yield results. Doing little things gives you little results, drains your creativity, and saps your brain power. When you cease to accomplish big, you lose desire and motivation. The less important your accomplishments, the less important you feel. You start to believe you are not cut out to achieve the success you imagined.

Engaging big things guarantees worthwhile achievements, and you will become addicted to the momentum of accomplishment. That momentum is a far more lasting high than the transitory feel-good of checking off trivial tasks.

Once you are engaged in accomplishing big things, you will approach even routine matters with laser-sharp focus, quickly delegating or deleting. More important, with fewer distractions to sidetrack you, your creativity and productivity will catch fire, and the resulting momentum will keep you pumped.

Start Your Momentum Rolling with Eight Easy Steps

1. Define three big things. Your vision might be to start a new business within six months. To achieve your vision, a big thing might be to develop a strategic plan. Choose three important goals that support your vision, then zero in on one of these big things. Define your strategies for doing so and the specific time each day you will implement your strategies. Refer back to your big thing, and make sure each task is really important and necessary.

2. Challenge your commitment. Ask yourself if you are really going for it or if you will quit when it is too tough. Make sure you are fully committed to the big things you choose and that they are right for you. You will not do the hard work required to accomplish something big if it is ultimately not right for you.

3. Set aside sacred “momentum time.” Schedule substantial chunks of uninterrupted time (aim for two-hour blocks) for projects that support at least one big thing. To carve out time, attach a time increment to your daily tasks, no matter how small. Examine every activity and decide how to eliminate it, delegate it, hire it out, or do it faster.

You will have to fight to keep your momentum time sacred. Learn to say things like “I’ll be available in one hour. What time after that works best for you?” Claim your momentum time, and you will reclaim those lost hours you have been seeking.

4. Let nothing stop you. Set a start time, and stick to it. Do not lose momentum by “warming up your engine” with feel-good busywork. Banish all thoughts (“Will I be assigned the new account?”) and interruptions (“Will my son make the varsity team?”) that do not relate to your big thing. Put your phone on voicemail, and do not open your e-mail. You can do it all later.

Develop a ritual to cleanse your mind—music, a cup of tea, an affirmation. A cluttered or tense mind accomplishes little. If you get distracted, even briefly, acknowledge the distraction, and commit to stopping it. Keep a pen and some sticky notes handy for sudden bursts of distracting brilliance. Write down the thought, and put it away for later.

5. Alternate momentum time with “weed pulling.” Miscellaneous routine tasks are like weeds—no matter how often you get rid of them (or how good it feels to pull them), they always come back. You will find that most of your feel-good tasks fall into this category. Eventually, they do have to be handled, and pulling a few weeds can provide a welcome break from more intensive work.

After each momentum session, devote 30 minutes to weed pulling—handling mail, e-mail, phone calls, or other minor chores. Clump small tasks together. If you devote a short session to opening mail, paying bills, and filing the receipts, you are being efficient at weed pulling. If possible, never handle any communication (paper or e-mail) more than once.

6. Focus on one big thing at a time. When you engage in too much at once, you risk finishing nothing. Finish your first big thing, or at least reach a significant milestone, before embarking on the next.
7. Let go of bad ideas. When my company decided to develop a product, we put extensive time into it, but we did not get the response we had anticipated. I realized that putting any more time or money into the project would be a bad idea, so I let it go. It still hurts to think about the hours and creativity we expended, but I am glad we moved on to something bigger and better.

When a “great” idea is not so great after all, you have to let it go. This frees you to work on the next genuine big thing. Be open to figuring out that some of your great ideas really are not—and be ready to let them go.

8. Safeguard your momentum. Accept that you will not please everyone. Someone is bound to be unhappy about the changes you make to focus on your big things. They will get over it. Stop feeling guilty, and stay true to your goals. Surround yourself with friends, family, and peers who support your vision. Discard all discouraging messages. This is your vision, not anyone else’s.

Engage momentum today. There is more to feeling good than the feel-good addiction. You can have time in your life and still have the time of your life. Make that your big thing for today.

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life”, visit http://www.selfgrowth.com/greatways3.html