Why do we Procrastinate?
Do you write down New Year’s resolutions every year and find out at the end of the year that you were not able to do them? Do you always find yourself in very tight deadlines and yet still say “I’ll do it tomorrow”? Do you spend most of your hours surfing the web instead of working?
Well, I do… I admit it. I procrastinate and it’s bad and I want it solved! But first, why do we procastinate?
“Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task,” said lead researcher Piers Steel of the University of Calgary. Steel analyzed more than 200 past studies on procrastination, dating back to the 1920s through 2006. He found a strong link between impulsiveness and the “I’ll-do-it-tomorrow” phenomenon. The research is detailed in the January issue of the journal Psychological Bulletin.
Impulsive people value today far more than tomorrow. “So they can’t feel motivated, deadlines don’t feel real, they have no energy until just before they happen,” Steel said. These people have the best of intentions, aiming to get started right away, but they don’t end up following through on their self-promises.
The personality trait rears its face in more than just the workplace.
“Impulsive people tend to have self-control problems in general. So they’re more likely to be smokers, more likely to overeat, more likely to gamble. They are the type of people who choose short-term gain and incur long-term pain,” Steel said.
However, Steel found in another study that when procrastinators do cram to finish the work, they work at a dizzying pace. “They work almost 11 times the average rate. Real procrastinators, just before the deadline, are mercurial,” he said.
Common predictors of procrastination: high distractibility, lack of self-confidence and a low level of intrinsic motivation, or the drive to check things off the to-do list.
So, are we doomed fellow procrastinators? Am I doomed???
Well, not really. A project due in a month doesn’t get the adrenaline going for a procrastinator, but something due tomorrow might give you that jolt. According to Steel, “Distant goals have very little motivational force. You have to bring them down into the daily goals and make them real in the moment.”
In other words, break down those monthly goals into more real daily goals to give you (us) the rush.
Tell you what, just before hitting ‘Publish’ for this article, I decided to put up a Yahoo!Group for procrastinators. I’m inviting you to join and am asking you to invite your friends to join the group as well. The whole purpose of the group is for procrastinators to help fellow procrastinators.
Writing down goals
I’ve attended a business training course last Saturday and though it was only a 2-hour short course, it was packed with information that will consume my entire week to digest. The main focus of the seminar was goal setting and how clear goals affects the future of a business.
According to the speaker, only 3% of the world’s become rich and that’s because only 3% of the world’s population set clear goals. According to a study made on Harvard students, 3% set their goals clearly, 13% have goals but were not written down, and the remaining 84% didn’t have goals at all. Ten years after, 13% who have goals but were not written down earned twice as much as the 84% who didn’t have goals at all. Even more striking was that the 3% who had clear goals earned 10 times as much as the 13% and 84% combined.
Obviously, setting clear goals and working them out is very important to the future of a person and that’s what I will be doing from this onward. Writing down my goals and working them out.
Early Valentine Cards
Christmas and New Year are both over and while most people get back to living their daily ‘normal’ lives, there are others who prepare for the next big worldwide event - Valentine’s day. One of them is Jokeroo.com and they’re doing it very early - as early as now. They have a huge collection of beautiful, sweet, and even funny Valentine Cards that will definitely reach into the heart of that special someone you treasure.
Check them out!
» Buy gifts for Valentine’s Day
Helping a Client Migrate to Thunderbird
Mr. Josemari Cuervo of Cuervo Far East, Inc and is also a web hosting client of mine asked me for help regarding his email setup in MS Outlook. For some reason, Outlook can’t login to his POP3 account and just keeps on throwing errors of sorts. We tried several things together but still to no avail. Eventually, I made the suggestion that it could be Outlook that’s causing the problem. He asked me what I email program am I using and I proudly told him that I use Mozilla Thunderbird! Hehehehe.
He downloaded it then installed it. Thunderbird asked him if he wants to import his settings and emails from Outlook and he did. After about 30 minutes of importing (he does have lots of email), all went well. He can now download his emails again. Thanks to Thunderbird and congratulations to Mr. Cuervo for choosing to move over. 
PPP + HP = $1000 and HP Goodies!
What do you get when you add PayPerPost and HP - the world’s leader in Digital Photo Printing? The answer — tons of unbelievable fun on a cold Chicago Christmas day!
Check out the video below so you can get a hang of what I’m talking about.
Ain’t it lovely? I especially like the part where Robyn (our brave contestant in the video) asks the man to sing a Christmas song, do the running man, and have a kiss under a mistletoe. Makes me think if I would like to participate in HP and PPP’s Postie Patrol. Hmmmmmm.
I honestly can’t believe that a typical PayPerPost postie can get nice goodies from HP (Printer, Camera, etc) plus 1,000 US Dollars in Cash just by following a simple yet challenging set of rules but here it is, you’ve seen it on video and it’s true.
Postie Patrol is definitely is good advertising for HP and PPP.
This post was brought to you by HP.
Facing the problems of 2007
Problems are everywhere and they’ve been around since the dawn of the universe. IMHO, problems make us better people and they teach us to think. The more we think, the more solutions we find and the better we become.
Now that 2007 is here, I know that I would still be facing some old problems from years ago and new problems ahead. What should I do? Simple, gear up and prepare for them — face them head on and solve them.
Sidenote: Good thing I have thick hair but if ever my hair recedes this year due to problems then I might just need the services of an expert, something like this New Jersey hair transplant company.
SEO Questions - why do they do it?
I’m not sure whether I should put this post under the SEO category or just under my ‘Personal Stuff’ category. This confusion in my head is due to the fact that this particular post is basically SEO-related but contains mostly of my own personal rambling and questions. Well, oh well…
Ok, on to it. SEO Questions - why do they do it? Why do they do what?
Why is it that some people optimize for keywords that doesn’t appear to be in order? By this I mean, why optimize for real estate La Jolla and not La Jolla real estate?
Why does iWebTool put rel=”nofollow” in most of its homepage links?
Why do many top-listed webpages have no content? I searched for pizza and Pizza Hut came number one but their website barely has content and it’s flash based. Btw, I already found an answer to this question which you can find here. Hmm, does this mean that getting enough inbound links offsets onpage optimization?
Why do certain people spend lots of dollars buying keyword rich domains when they can just buy one domain and create keyword-rich subdomains?
Last question, why is SEO often a pain in the butt? Hehehe.
Answers anyone?
» Get top-rated SEO books HERE.
Blogging for Money
I admit it! I’m guilty. I’m maintaining this blog so that I can make money. I do make some amount of good money from writing blog posts and a few cents here and there from different advertising networks all throughout my blog.
Why am I writing about this? Well, I just want to be transparent. I know that this blog should be as useful as possible to all of its visitors but there are also cases when I try to squeeze the requirements of a paid post into a useful article and it is a very hard thing to do since I still have to make sure that an entire blog post would still make sense and be useful. I certainly don’t want my visitors to label my blog as useless.
Most of the money earned comes from paid posts and reviews which require me to include links in my posts going to their sites plus certain other criteria. Link text can range from Beverly Hills liposuction to names of people. I also make money through Amazon sales and though I have only $3.00+ for the past 12 months, I am still pushing through with it since there is potential in it. All I need to do is find out the right way to squeeze the juice out of Amazon.
That said, I hope that my honesty have reached into your heart and your kind understanding. I promise to do my best to keep this blog as useful as possible.
If you’re wondering if this blog post is paid - the answer is YES. I’ll be paid a mere $3.00 for this but hey, that’s better than not getting paid right? Now, while you’re pondering on that, you might also want to take a look at these blogging-related books from Amazon — and perhaps buy some of them
Thanks and more power to all of you!
Looking towards the Local industry
I live in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan and it’s a place wherein businesses have barely scratched the surface of the online industry. Sure we have internet shops here and I’m starting to see more and more houses subscribing for high-speed internet access but I have seen NO local businesses here that use the internet as a marketing tool.
The entire province of Bulacan do have a website which can be found at http://www.bulacan.gov.ph/ and though it is pretty useful and informative, it’s not really an online marketing tool for the local business industry.
Thinking about this, I thought, why not make the move and be the pioneer? Sure it would be tough but it pays to be first. Perhaps I could start something like this San Diego City Guide then innovate from there. Oh well, I think it’s a good idea and I think I should start writing a good business plan for this.
Wish me luck!
Being in the right place at the right time
It’s January 2, 2007 and I’m still pondering on what new business I should start.
I remember watching the movie ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley‘ a few years back and I remember myself saying that Bill Gates was lucky because he was at the right place at the right time. My argument back then was that if Bill Gates was born 10 years later then he wouldn’t have been what he is today mainly because someone else would have found the opportunity that Bill Gates found when he started Microsoft.
Fast forward to present day… I realized that no matter when and where Bill Gates was born, he would still be the successful businessman that we all know today provided that his business skills are the same. In other words, if you got what it takes to be successful then you will be - no matter who you are, what your citizenship is, or when you were born.
A well-planned business should be geared towards providing what people need and want. Such a business would be successful no matter what. If say I live in Beverly Hills, then I would most probably put up a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgery business since people living in Beverly Hills are somehow ‘pressured’ to look good.
Second question in mind now is do I want an online business or an offline one? Well, well, well…
» Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley
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