I had written this headline more than 2 months but I did not write anything because I wanted to check for myself if this worked.

The idea of a forcing function – and I read this idea first in the book Will Power Doesn’t Work by Dr. Benjamin Hardy – is that you first decide the deadline and then work backwards to meet the deadline. Though Dr. Ben Hardy is a very young guy, he has written some really interesting stuff. One of the key things which I have learnt from his books is the fact “your environment” decides how successful you become. If you want to succeed you need to change your environment.

Once you have the deadline decided, you automatically then do not take assignments or activities which can divert your mind from the deadline. You put on your calendar your schedule well in advance so that when you get even other enticing but conflicting requirements , you just refuse without feeling the guilt.

I have put this on a daily basis for myself now. There are 2 things which I now do very religiously – writing my journal and writing my blog. And both have been put on my calendar. So anything else which even has a chance of disturbing these 2 things in my calendar gets discarded.

The advantage that I have seen because of this is that now I no longer have to take decisions to do these 2 things. They are now part of a habit.

I have now put this into some other areas of my life where I have already decided on some goals with a deadline and am working backwards to ensure that divert my attention.

I have a very distracted mind and I can get distracted with a bird chirping or if I hear a music note being played far away. The bigger the distraction, the longer that I would fall away from my targets. And then I would realise after the end of the year that I had passed one more year without achieving much.

Try this for yourself and let me know how you benefit from this.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!