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.

你听说过某个人做事总是失败吗？你听说过某个人总能按时完成工作吗？我肯定你一定听说过。事实上，我敢肯定你所认识的大多数人都属于这两个阵营，那么你是那种人呢？

99.9% 的人会在这两个阵营之一里，而不会在二者之间，这是有原因的。有多少你认识的人会按时完成事务（get things done）的同时又对事情放任自流（let things slide）？想一想，我这辈子是没有遇到过这样的人。这是因为尽力完成或者拖延下去，并非只是我们情绪或环境的起伏不定，而是自身的一种习惯。

GTD的关键是坚持GTD。也就是要养成一种新的习惯，在想要按时完成事务或考虑GTD这件事时，根本不需考虑，而使它成为你的一部分。这样，你只要坐下来去做就好了。

动力很重要，但我坚持认为这并不是主要的。动力当然可以影响你一整天，但你的问题是重复性、习惯性的拖拉，你的问题并非动力，而是坏习惯。在我看来，这是改变你行动力模式的最基本的知识点。

它与系统无关，与调整无关，与你怎么想也无关。

它与你一般情况下有意识和下意识的去做有关。如果你有拖拉的毛病，它就像家里的灯泡一样影响着周围很多事务的执行。

这个问题需要你跳出老圈子，建立一个新的习惯，你必须持续完成任务直到它成为你人格和心态的一部分。那么持续的完成任务就是你的首要问题，你究竟怎么走出循环？

每天早晨进退两难的境况提醒了我：为了喝到咖啡以使自己清醒，我不得不煮咖啡，而这需要动手和清醒。

从小处开始

建立新的习惯，直到相关的动作不需要管束就可以执行，就像肌肉一样产生了记忆效应。这并不新鲜，我相信这个说法你已经听过很多次了。

如果你发胖而想回到苗条身材，你如何做？要想成功瘦身，你就要从小处开始。当然，很多人的失败尝试源自疯狂跑步或者单纯的健身，然而通常会发生的是，他们失败并放弃。

要建立任何新的习惯，你必须迈小步然后提高一点点，这一点不能让你感到困难。如果你做50个俯卧撑已经是小菜一碟，那就增加数量。个人行动力和它一样。你从给自己制定小的计划开始，一旦无法实现就降低难度，如果获得成功就再进一步。

要坚持下去

无论你从小处还是大处开始，你必须要坚持下去。为了瘦身做了一周的俯卧撑，下两周忘掉然后又想起来再做一周，这对你不会有帮助。你建立新习惯的过程，比如塑造好的体型，会很快消失。再说一遍，这和学习“完成计划的态度”一样，如果你只是偶尔锻炼你的肌肉，那么休息的时间会毁掉已有的努力。

幸运的是，为了协助懒惰而又散漫的心态，我们可以在手机、iCal或者Outlook（或者任何你可以选择的东西）里设置闹钟。当然，唯一的问题是要服从提醒！

不要自满

如果你在这一阶段失败，首要也是最明显的忠告是：从小处开始，却不保持。为自己的进步而满足很容易，这不会推动你前进。记住要持续不断的增加挑战的难度或层次，不管你想要获得是什么东西。

第二个忠告，不太明显却可能更重要的是：不要设置最终目标。这并不是说不设置目标或者里程碑，而是不要有一个让你停止努力和自我满足的状态。生活并不意味着停滞不前。你可以一直进步，无论你在做什么。这种才能可以完成工作，同样也可以使你的生活更进一步。 你能够建立并强化好习惯，可以使你更轻松的不断解决越来越大的问题

如果你坚持这条路线，那么总有一天，当你要处理一个大计划，大家认为它对你来说难以处理，而你将可以轻松完成。