It's funny how easy it is to get into a state of mind that is unproductive, and just how hard it is to get out of that state of mind. I have been in that very state the last few weeks. I believe it was brought on by my time away on vacation. Upon coming back, thinking that I would be rejuvenated and ready to get back to work I was sorely mistaken. It seems the mind contains a level of inertia in whatever it is doing. I have given lots of tips on this site on how to get out of these states, but when it comes time to put them in action myself, I find it interesting how something so simple can be difficult to follow through with.

While I was outside yesterday ripping apart one of our flower gardens to make room for an extension on our deck. I started to think about how I got to where I am right now. What had happened in my life that brought me to this point. I wasn't thinking this because of any negative thoughts, but merely out of curiosity, how did I become who I am today, and for that matter, who will I be 5 years from now, how about 10 years from now? Is there something I can do to set myself on what I currently think is the right path, or will that path most likely change with time? Maybe it was from the heat but I had to sit down and think about this, I poured myself a nice cold glass of water and started to pet my dog on his head while I started to ponder this.

The Human Ego is an interesting thing, Whenever we take offense, pride, feel jealous or almost any one of our other negative emotions, we aren't truly being who we are, we are actually acting out the motions for our egos. The majority of us are so intertwined with our egos, we can't separate our real emotions from those begin controlled by the ego within us. Parting with our egoic emotions isn't something that is easy, it takes time and energy to change our habits, but we should all strive to get to this point because when we are able to see clearly, and be ourselves instead of our ego counterparts then we can truly shine and be the people we ought to be.

A lot of days, I find I come home from work, and then before I know it, it is time to head to bed again and I didn't get anything done that I wanted to do that night. This is frustrating, in fact it's really frustrating, and it starts to become an endless cycle for a lot of us. Our productivity starts to drop and it keeps going because all of a sudden we just don't "feel" like doing what we know we should or want to do. It's hard to detect at first because you might justify the unproductive night or day by just taking a day off and having a rest. The problem starts when these days off turn into a week off.

I recently had a discussion with a close friend of mine about the merits of going back to school. At this moment in time, I personally don’t see a need for myself to go back to school, but I do believe that a lot of people pass up on many good opportunities when they decide not to get extra training or schooling in a topic or profession that interests them. There are many reasons for this to happen, some being, the person feels it will be too hard to go back to school, or that they don’t have enough time or money to enroll. It could be because of their current jobs or personal situations. After saying all that, I believe the number one reason that people don’t take up this opportunity is because they just never thought of it.

Too many of us are stuck thinking about the short term instead of the long term, this is a crises that is not only seen in our personal lives these days, but in entire corporate structures as well.

Procrastination is the silent killer of dreams, if you were to look at 95% of the population of normal unsuccessful* people, you will find a few things in common but the one that will come up most would be procrastination. *Unsuccessful is being used as a lose term to describe anybody who has not been able to achieve their desired wealth or life's dreams. At this point in my life, I would consider myself unsuccessful, but I plan to change that ;-). To ask someone if they procrastinate they will most surely tell you that they do not, and in their minds they are right. The human mind has a very efficient process of justifying our actions and keeping them from being labeled as unwanted characteristics.

Creating a project road map is one of the most fundamentally important steps you can take to succeed at your endeavor. When I say project I am talking about anything that takes more then one action to complete. Projects come in many different sizes, taking the garbage out to the curb would be considered a project. First you have to go around the house and collect all of the garbage and next you have to bring it all out to the curb. What I just said would have been your plan, it doesn't require any documents or formal planning, your brain automatically puts the pieces together. A large project could be building a house, you wouldn't start building this house without a proper set of blueprints would you?