Have you ever known someone who consistently fails to complete things? Have you ever known someone who always gets the job done on time? I’m sure you have. In fact, I’m sure most people you know fall into one camp or the other. Which one of these two types of people are you?

There’s a reason that 99.9% of people fall into one of these two camps, but not somewhere in between. How many people have you known that are just as likely to get things done as they are to let things slide? Come to think of it, I’ve never met a person like this in my life. It’s because the trend to complete or to procrastinate are not mere fluctuations in our mood or our environment, but habits in and of themselves.

The key to getting things done is to consistently get things done. It is about building a new habit and making it so much a part of you that you don’t have to think about how you’re going to get it done and what you’re going to do to psych yourself up for it; you just sit down and complete it.

Motivation is important, but I’d contend that it’s not a big part of how much you complete. It can certainly affect you on an off day, but if your problem is repeated, regular procrastination, your problem isn’t motivation. It’s bad habits. In my opinion, this is the most fundamental piece of knowledge to changing your productivity patterns.

It’s not about systems. It’s not about hacks. It’s not about the way you feel.

It’s about the way you consciously and subconsciously approach taking action in general. If you’ve got a procrastination problem, you’ve most likely got one that affects getting around to changing a lightbulb at home just as much as tasks at work.

The problem with is getting out of the loop; to form a new habit, you have to consistently complete tasks until it just becomes a part of your personality and attitude. And consistently completing tasks is the problem you’re having in the first place, so how the heck do you get out of the cycle?

Reminds me of the dilemma I face each morning: in order to drink my coffee and become alert, I’ve got to make the coffee, which is fiddly and requires alertness.

(I’m not quitting coffee. Don’t even say it.)

Start Small

Discipline, which is at the core of building new habits until the associated actions don’t require discipline in order to be executed, is like a muscle. That’s nothing new. I’m sure you’ve heard this said many times before.

What do you do when you’re out of shape and you want to get back in shape? To do this successfully, you start small. Of course, the temptation many people fall for is going for strenuous runs and workouts straight away, but what always happens, happens: they fail and give up.

To build any new habit, you must take small steps and increase the size of these steps only once you have no difficulty with the one you’re on. If you’re doing fifty push-ups in your workout and this becomes easy and unchallenging, you up the number. It’s the same with general personal productivity. You start by assigning yourself small tasks and once you fly through the little, easy items on the list, you step it up a notch and tackle something a bit larger.

Be Consistent

Whether you start small or you start big, you’ve got to be consistent. Doing push-ups each day for a week as you try and get back in shape, then forgetting for two weeks and doing it for one more week before you forget again, is not likely to help you out all too much. The progress you’ve made on developing new habits, and improving your fitness, will quickly disappear. Again, it’s the same in the case of learning this “completion attitude” — if you give your productivity muscles a work out infrequently, the time in between will murder any progress you have made.

Fortunately, to assist our lazy and undisciplined minds, we have alarms which you can set on your phone, in iCal or Outlook, or whatever it is you use. Of course, the only problem then is obeying the reminder!

Don’t Be Complacent

The first and most obvious piece of advice that falls under this heading is: start small, but don’t stay small. It’s easy to get comfortable with your progress and not push yourself further. Remember to consistently increase the level of challenge or difficulty, no matter what it is you’re trying to master.

The second, less obvious, but perhaps more important thing is: don’t have an end goal. And by that I don’t mean you shouldn’t set goals and milestones, but don’t have a place where you’ll just stop trying and plateau. Life’s not meant to be lived that way. You can always improve, no matter what it is you are doing. The ability to fly through work so you can get on with life is no different. You can always build and reinforce the good habits that allow you to tackle consecutively larger and larger projects with increasing ease.

If you stay on this road, there will come a day when you’ll want to tackle a project that everyone around you says is too big for you to realistically handle — and you’ll handle it with ease.

你聽說過某個人做事總是失敗嗎？你聽說過某個人總能按時完成工作嗎？我肯定你一定聽說過。事實上，我敢肯定你所認識的大多數人都屬于這兩個陣營，那么你是那種人呢？

99.9% 的人會在這兩個陣營之一里，而不會在二者之間，這是有原因的。有多少你認識的人會按時完成事務（get things done）的同時又對事情放任自流（let things slide）？想一想，我這輩子是沒有遇到過這樣的人。這是因為盡力完成或者拖延下去，并非只是我們情緒或環境的起伏不定，而是自身的一種習慣。

GTD的關鍵是堅持GTD。也就是要養成一種新的習慣，在想要按時完成事務或考慮GTD這件事時，根本不需考慮，而使它成為你的一部分。這樣，你只要坐下來去做就好了。

動力很重要，但我堅持認為這并不是主要的。動力當然可以影響你一整天，但你的問題是重復性、習慣性的拖拉，你的問題并非動力，而是壞習慣。在我看來，這是改變你行動力模式的最基本的知識點。

它與系統無關，與調整無關，與你怎么想也無關。

它與你一般情況下有意識和下意識的去做有關。如果你有拖拉的毛病，它就像家里的燈泡一樣影響著周圍很多事務的執行。

這個問題需要你跳出老圈子，建立一個新的習慣，你必須持續完成任務直到它成為你人格和心態的一部分。那么持續的完成任務就是你的首要問題，你究竟怎么走出循環？

每天早晨進退兩難的境況提醒了我：為了喝到咖啡以使自己清醒，我不得不煮咖啡，而這需要動手和清醒。

從小處開始

建立新的習慣，直到相關的動作不需要管束就可以執行，就像肌肉一樣產生了記憶效應。這并不新鮮，我相信這個說法你已經聽過很多次了。

如果你發胖而想回到苗條身材，你如何做？要想成功瘦身，你就要從小處開始。當然，很多人的失敗嘗試源自瘋狂跑步或者單純的健身，然而通常會發生的是，他們失敗并放棄。

要建立任何新的習慣，你必須邁小步然后提高一點點，這一點不能讓你感到困難。如果你做50個俯臥撐已經是小菜一碟，那就增加數量。個人行動力和它一樣。你從給自己制定小的計劃開始，一旦無法實現就降低難度，如果獲得成功就再進一步。

要堅持下去

無論你從小處還是大處開始，你必須要堅持下去。為了瘦身做了一周的俯臥撐，下兩周忘掉然后又想起來再做一周，這對你不會有幫助。你建立新習慣的過程，比如塑造好的體型，會很快消失。再說一遍，這和學習“完成計劃的態度”一樣，如果你只是偶爾鍛煉你的肌肉，那么休息的時間會毀掉已有的努力。

幸運的是，為了協助懶惰而又散漫的心態，我們可以在手機、iCal或者Outlook（或者任何你可以選擇的東西）里設置鬧鐘。當然，唯一的問題是要服從提醒！

不要自滿

如果你在這一階段失敗，首要也是最明顯的忠告是：從小處開始，卻不保持。為自己的進步而滿足很容易，這不會推動你前進。記住要持續不斷的增加挑戰的難度或層次，不管你想要獲得是什么東西。

第二個忠告，不太明顯卻可能更重要的是：不要設置最終目標。這并不是說不設置目標或者里程碑，而是不要有一個讓你停止努力和自我滿足的狀態。生活并不意味著停滯不前。你可以一直進步，無論你在做什么。這種才能可以完成工作，同樣也可以使你的生活更進一步。 你能夠建立并強化好習慣，可以使你更輕松的不斷解決越來越大的問題

如果你堅持這條路線，那么總有一天，當你要處理一個大計劃，大家認為它對你來說難以處理，而你將可以輕松完成。