The now habit offers a comprehensive plan to help readers lower their stre
ss and increase their time to enjoy guilt-free play. Dr. Fiore’s techniques will help any busy person start tasks sooner and accomplish them more quickly, without the anxiety brought on by the negative habits of procrastination and perfectionism.
The now habit
This program is based on more positive definitions of life, work, human potential, and procrastination that are more in keeping with the positive psychology of Abraham Maslow than with Sigmund Freud. It has greater faith in human nature, and therefore it goes beyond the typical “how to” book by making you aware of the deeper anxieties about failure, perfectionism, and criticism that lead you to procrastinate.
The program shows you how to shift gears into a higher level of functioning so you can go faster more efficiently. It shows you how scheduling more guilt-free play in your life can attack the underlying causes of procrastination by lowering resentment toward work, making it easier to start working, improving the quality of work, and stirring motivation. With this strategy you will be able to work virtually free of stress and enjoy your leisure time free of guilt. The Now Habit program will provide you with ten powerful tools for overcoming procrastination.
10 Powerful tools for overcoming procrastination
1. Creating safety will show you how to put a psychological safety net under your high-wire act so that you can lessen your fear of failure and learn how to bounce back from mistakes with renewed purpose.
2. Reprogramming negative attitudes through positive self-talk will help you to identify your negative messages to yourself and discover how they adversely affect you, while replacing them with positive phrasing that directs your energy toward task-oriented thoughts and rapid solutions.
3. Using the symptom to trigger the cure will show you how to use old habits to evoke and strengthen the formation of new, positive habits.
4. Guilt-free play will teach you how to strategically schedule your leisure time in order to shift your focus from work to play, thereby creating a subconscious urge to return to work.
5. Three-dimensional thinking and the reverse calendar will show you how to control the terror of being overwhelmed by important tasks by creating a step-by-step calendar of your path to achievement, with adequate time to rest and to fully appreciate your accomplishments.
6. Making worry work for you will show you how developing plans for coping with distractions will help you achieve your goals and strengthen your ability to face the worst that could happen.
7. The Unschedule will let you see the freedom awaiting you through prescheduled guilt-free play, will create a realistic image of the amount of time available, and will give you a built-in time clock for recording quality time on projects to let you see how much you’ve accomplished.
8. Setting realistic goals will help you to clear your mind of guilt-producing goals that cannot be worked on in the present, and will direct your energies toward the few worthwhile goals that deserve your attention now.
9. Working in the flow state will bring you beyond stress and low motivation to a state of focused energy, interest, and concentration within two minutes or less—letting you know that regardless of how you feel about your project, within moments you will be working at your most productive and creative levels.
10. Controlled setbacks will prepare you for setbacks so that you quickly turn them into opportunities, anticipate the temptation to procrastinate, and build persistence into your overall plan for achievement.
Related reading:
Complement The now habit with Overcoming procrastinating