NOW MORE THAN ever, we live in a world of opportunity.

But the downside to new opportunities – brought about by new technology and new social and working conventions – is a world that seduces us into drifting through life. Things like: shopping, web-surfing, casual tweeting, photo commenting and status-updating.

It’s not that these things aren’t fun or even good. But while it might feel like you’re “doing” – in large part thanks to the power of billions of euro of marketing – you might have a feeling that there’s got to be more to life.

So for you – this is your kick in the pants. If you want to do something but secretly fear you’re never going to do it, whatever that might be, then one or more of the following options might help you:

• Throw yourself into retraining
• Lose a dress size
• Go back to school
• Write a book
• Ditch your partner
• Take your company in a new direction
• Create art
• Learn to play polo
• Seek the promotion you want
• Set up your own business

The urge to procrastinate

Of course, in any task you undertake, you may feel the urge to procrastinate. That’s only human. You see, doing anything worthwhile takes an investment in time and effort and the rewards are in the future.

In the meantime, your vices are offering you immediate short-term satisfaction: put on a DVD, have a glass of wine, listen to some music, surf the internet, lie on the couch, raid the fridge.

This battle between your vices and your virtue is as old as the hills and the outcome is just as predictable unless you are determined and smart.

To help you concentrate on doing and ignore the temptations of procrastination, here are some tips from Professor Piers Steel, who studies procrastination at the University of Calgary:

• Sully tempting alternatives: imagine as vividly as possible the downside of being tempted by distraction.
• Imagine the TV remote is tacky with the paw prints of your permanently ill young nieces; that the TV is wired badly and will explode if you switch on during the day; that the door to the fridge will fall off if you open it as often during the day as you usually do. You get the picture.
• Focus on the abstract aspects of temptations: triple chocolate cheesecake, for example, can be construed as its constituent parts of fat and sugar – and that doesn’t sound so yummy.
• Entirely eliminate cues that remind you of distracting alternatives. Keeping your workplace free of clutter will help you accomplish this.
• Replace the clutter with meaningful messages or images. The legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton kept a photograph of the Waldorf Hotel on his desk to help him maintain his focus and avoid distraction and procrastination. The photo was there for 18 years … until he bought the hotel.

Your internal nagging friend

Here’s some good news. Once you start something, the subconscious brain won’t let you stop, so you’ll have your own internal slave-driver whipping you on.

It’s called the Zeigarnik effect. A Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, was intrigued to learn that waiters could take complicated orders from a large group of students and remember them perfectly without writing them down.

But as soon as the bill had been paid, waiters’ memories of what had been ordered fell apart. It was as if the order was put into the mental trash can.

Her conclusion was that once a project had been set running the subconscious was keeping constant track of it and would badger the waiter to make sure it got completed. It was as if any interruption to a task becomes a psychic disturbance that unsettles the brain.

What this means is that simply by starting and committing to your project you get a little help – in the form of your subconscious – to nag you and ensure you get “closure” in psychological terms. In our terms, it’s ensuring you do the next big thing: finishing the task!

That’s one to take away.

Other things to help you on your journey

Once you are moving deep into the land of doing, you should use every tool you can to ensure you stick to the course. Fortunately we can benefit from the study of 5,000 people worldwide by Richard Wiseman, Britain’s only professor for the public understanding of psychology.

He found five steps that help maintain motivation throughout the course of a project:

Public commitment: Tell people close to you, friends, family, work colleagues, about your plan and commit to them that you will see it through.

Step by step: Chunk the work into pieces. By making the work manageable and bite-sized you reduce the chances of being over-awed.

Rewards: As you achieve each success along the way – celebrate!

Writing a record: Marking your progress in a physical way helps. Writing a diary, drawing charts of your journey, drawing pictures…all these things help make the process real, remind you of what you have achieved and keeps you focused on the next step.

Do it for the right reasons: Reminding yourself of the positive reasons why you are working hard towards your goal will help keep you on course.

Tick tock

Life has a sting in the tail. It’s shorter than we expect. And it races by while we’re working out what’s really important and what actually isn’t.

As time roars past our ears, we drift, deliberate, doubt and take ourselves too seriously, yet all the while we talk about what we would, could and should do to make it better. And then it’s gone.

So let’s walk the talk. Because there’s never been a better time, or a more urgent time, to start doing the things you want to do.

This is an edited extract from Stop Talking, Start Doing Action Book: Practical Tools and Exercises to Give You a Kick in the Pants by Shaa Wasmund (published by Capstone).

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