Is take the most taxing, disgusting, difficult job or task that you have to do to get towards your goals and do that first thing in the day. So to make it applicable, don't check your email, don't do any of that. Just get straight into that task. Dedicate half an hour. Get it done. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python, career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Right, episode 72. This is Bob. Welcome back. Thanks for tuning in. And this week, I'm alone. I'm sitting there alone. Cause Julian is on a business trip and is generally enjoying life, I guess. Nah, he's still doing some pie bites. So this week, we have two segments of our productivity course lined up, one on motivation and the other on procrastination. We have spoken a lot about productivity goals and deep work already on the podcast, so we skipped ahead to chapter seven, I think, where we talk about motivation and procrastination. And because you can manage your time very well, you can be very productive. But the other thing is really emotional is, like, how do you keep that motivation up, especially over a longer period of time, and things get rough. And procrastination is often related to having to do the hard things, the things that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. And it's kind of insidious in that, you know, eat bad for one day, nothing happens, do it consistently, will be a disaster. So, yeah, procrastination, we have to catch that early on. So enjoy those 15 minutes of content. And next week, we're back together to do another episode. Thanks for listening. Motivation. Yeah, this is one of our favorites, motivation. How do you stay motivated? What is motivation? What's going on? Let's talk about it. It's super critical for the long term. And as Muhammad Ali said, I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit, suffer now, and live the rest of your life as a champion, powerful man. I actually. I love that quote. I really, really love that quote. It can help you get through a really tough situation, which is nice. So, yeah, because the daily grind is not always fun, but it's necessary to get to your bigger goal. Exactly. So how to stay motivated? Yeah, desire breathes motivation. So a lot of motivation comes down to, you know, why you want the thing, why you want to get to that goal, why you want that to reach that objective. So what is your desire, what is your deepest desire when it comes to achieving this task? And if you can link the two together, you know, say, completing the project or, uh, getting whatever it is done around the house, if you can link that to a desire. Well, I want the house super clean because it makes me feel amazing when my house is perfectly tidied and nothing is left out. If you can link it all to a desire, how you feel that emotion, then there's your motivation right there. Yeah. And the inverse is true as well. Like if you lose motivation at some point, it's usually that you're not so focused on the goal. So we, it's really time to get back to why I'm doing this and what am I trying to achieve. And also when we talk with people, you talk about the goals, like getting them into that longer term vision. They light up, you know, and that's, that's motivation. Yeah. Not many people think of the emotional side of this. That's the beauty of it. Yeah. So go back to your goals regularly. It's very easy to get stuck in a daily grind in the minutiae of a job, and that can wear down your motivation. So it's make it a habit to every week, or at least every month, look at your goals and ask, why are you doing the things that you're doing? Yeah. And if you have been planning your goals, you should be able to, you know, you should know what your goals are, but this exercise is great. So going back to them regularly, because if you do that, you might find some goals that you perhaps forgot about and you might think, oh yeah, that was a goal for me. And it might reinvigorate you to keep at them. You know, it will reinvigorate you, I should say. Because if you see them on paper, consistently and regularly, they're always at the forefront of your mind and you're never going to forget about them. It's going to be your constant drive to get it done. Yep. And that ties into visualizing your future self, because as we said in the goals module, your goals are probably going to be a couple of steps ahead of you. Like your future self will be bigger than your current self. So it's definitely something motivating to strive towards. And I think the visualization is important there already. Envision how that looks, right? To live in a, in a place where you want to live, house that, surrounding, make that very visible. Yep. Yeah, you should, you should. This should be a lot of fun for you. To do as well, visualizing your future self. It might be like the day that you quit your job because you have gotten the job at the dream company. Could be the day that you move houses to an amazing location and you just picture yourself going for a walk along the beach every morning, before school, before work. All that stuff, like so many cool things you can do when you perform this part of the exercise, because it's what's going to keep you going. And this is one of the most powerful ones. And for me, this is one of the most powerful things that I do to keep pushing. Yep, that's not on the slide, but psycho sibernetics is a great book for this. And yeah, if you talk about pivot, talk about accountability, we have with each other and also with our clients. So that's a huge thing. I can confidently say that Pibytes wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for us holding each other accountable to our bigger goals. Yeah, and you know, the thing is, the accountability partner thing in our case has been hugely beneficial in the sense that if one of us doesn't perform, we're letting the other person down as well. We're not just having to have that, you know, embarrassing check in where you say, sorry, I didn't get it done. Which is generally what you'd say to an accountability partner. This is more of a. In our case, it was more of a, if you didn't get it done, the other person suffered in some way. So, yeah, having an accountability partner here can be definitely motivating. If you find the right person as an accountability partner, you better show up. That's true. I'll hunt you down. He's nicer than your peers here. Very important, we learned as well, is to respect your bio. And with bio, we mean sleep, exercise, basically your body, because body and mind are kind of the same. So if you're not fit, then your mind's going to suffer. It's very easy to that. Your motivation is going to suffer from that. The sleep is a huge part of that. I mean, you think about it, right? If whenever you've been motivated the most, you felt great. You know, it's really been a great motivator to just feel good, to just feel energetic, to feel strong, to feel alert and awake. The days that you never want to do anything, you've got bags under your eyes. You, you feel like, I want seven coffees. You just want to dig into a bag of chips or M and Ms. You know, I'm really trying to be trying to paint the picture here. But when you get that sleep and you get that exercise and you feeling good about yourself, that's when you have the energy to really push and get stuff done. So I cannot stress this one enough, you know, to really push your motivation, take some time to build a proper sleep schedule and to get out there and do some form of exercise. Anything is better than nothing. Yeah. And very important to boost your motivation as well is to work with people that are one or two steps ahead of you. Yeah, this one, I love this one. Because if you are working with people that are ahead of you, in your opinion, they might not have the same opinion, of course, but if they're ahead of you in your eyes, that's your motivation, because you see the end result. You know, you're visualizing your future self, but in this case, you can see your future self in that person. So let's just talk work here. If your goal is to get a promotion, to see someone that has already done that, to see someone who's in the position that you want to go and was perhaps where you were two years before you look at that person, they could be your mentor, whatever it is. But seeing them is really powerful. It's a great reflection of where you can go. It's a great motivator to see, okay, if I put in the hard yards now, that's exactly where I can be. So I love. Because it's very easy to get into your bubble and think that's all there is. But in order to grow, sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. And seeing people that are ahead of you, it just opens new channels, new, you know, a new motivation, and you start to see, oh, it's. That's actually possible. I didn't think that was even out there, you know? And if you. If you don't go seeking them out, then you're not even going to know what that success looks like. Right. So, worthwhile doing that search. Yeah, no, definitely shortcuts your way to success. All right. With motivation covered, next thing we want to talk about procrastination, which is. Can be a serious problem. So we need to address that. Can we do it later? No, I'm kidding. Let's do it now. Hey, quick note from a sponsor, which is us. Right back to the episode. So if you like the content so far. So this is part of, as I said, the productivity course. And this four hour course is really geared towards 80 20 Pareto principle. Give you the tools, just the tools that you need. To become more productive. And as an example, Cedric, who did the course recently, said the following. I can genuinely say that they gave me back 2 hours a day on average, while becoming more productive towards my goals and still having energy left at the end of the day. The burnout I kept feeling because a project seemed too overwhelming is now as good as gone and replaced with a focus that knows where to start and what to do to reach those goals. I'm back to enjoying code and experimenting, reading more, working out, eating healthier, and cleaning more, all while getting more time and peace of mind in return. So not bad for a four hour course. So check it out. It's on pibytes, pibit es productivity. So first of all, to beat procrastination, we need to know when it happens. And you have to realize that it usually happens on things that make you feel uncomfortable. Why is that? That is such a good line. One of my favorite things to think about when I realize I haven't done something that I should have done weeks ago. And it's always that point, it makes you feel uncomfortable and you never want to admit it. Because I'm not just talking about writing that report or putting together whatever document or something at work. I'm talking about picking up the phone to call someone. You know, everyone procrastinates on stuff like that. They procrastinate on, say, calling the bank to negotiate a better mortgage deal. Or I'm getting very specific here, but the reality is, because it makes you uncomfortable, you'd never want to call the bank to do stuff, you know, to ask for things. There are so many things you don't want to do around the house. Perhaps clean the shower, perhaps clean the toilets. And to go back to professional stuff. Perhaps you just don't want to write that report. Because it's going to be hard, because it's going to be difficult to sort through the data to make some visualizations, because when you present it to someone, they may not like it. There's all that impostor syndrome and fear that comes in. That is why we procrastinate. It makes you uncomfortable. It might be hard, but that's exactly why I love that one. Yeah, and it's costly and it's insidious, as I like to say, because eating unhealthily, one day nothing will happen. But do it for ten years and it will literally cause disaster. Right. So you have to realize that by putting off the hard things consistently, you're definitely going to notice that on your longer term goals. Because if, and we hope those are stretch goals, as we covered before. That will involve things that will be difficult and that will make you uncomfortable. Otherwise you won't get to the next level. So it's very easy to put off, but it has a cost, a compounding cost over time. So then to get practical, how to beat procrastination. So first of all, again, this goes back to the motivation. Focus on the longer term goals and remember why they're important to you. Because if you think about being healthy, for example, that should be a great motivator to, to get moving every morning. Yep. And there should be some emotion to that as well, right? I mean, if you have a family or friends or whatever, well, remember why getting healthy is important to you because you want to be around them, you want to be there for your kids, you want to do all of that stuff, live a good life. So yeah, just focus on those goals again. And every step now that you take now will pay dividends later. So what is the opportunity cost of not doing it? What we mean by that is if you don't work on whatever that task is. So using the health one again, if you don't take that step now, and as we mentioned about procrastination, that it just gets worse and worse. If you don't take the step now, what is going to be the consequence of doing that? So that could be something like, you know, pain, could be something like health issues, could be whatever it might be. So consider that when you are realizing that you're procrastinating on something. Yeah. And then more practically, then build the habit of doing just a little bit of hard work before the pleasure. And we taught the Pomodoro technique before. And if you do the hard things, but in manageable chunks and you put some pleasure or reward, that should make it way easier. And you get more. You get to systematize it more. Yep. So eat the ugliest frog first. And that's a Brian Tracy book in quote. But do some easy work to gain momentum. As we've mentioned before, you know, it's a really great technique. Get the really simple thing done and so you get that wind in your sails where you go, yes, I can do stuff. I've actually gotten stuff done. That's why I really like that quote about, you know, making your bed first thing in the morning, because it gives you that motivation that you've just done something. But that said, one of the techniques, eat the ugliest frog first is the complete opposite is take the most taxing, disgusting, difficult job or task that you have to do to get towards your goals and do that first thing in the day. So to make it applicable, don't check your email, don't do any of that. Just get straight into that task. Dedicate half an hour, get it done. Yeah. So in our case, that could be writing an article. So first you make your little bit of momentum, then write that big article first thing, and then you win the day. Right, as they say. Yep. And then you don't feel bad doing the fun stuff like, you know, getting to know the community. And lastly, control your environment and work life balance. So this goes a little bit back to the pomodoro and the shifting of hard work with reward. But yeah, if you multitask, you try to work and play at the same time. It's just, you know, don't get anything done. So when you work, you work. When you play, you play. But you have to have both, right? You have to have that balance to have the willpower every day to do the hard things first. So I think that balance is very important. Yeah. Not just for you, but for everyone else around you as well. So, very important. And two books we recommend that are really relevant and can help you beat procrastination. Talk a lot about this is eat that frog by Brian tracing, already mentioned in a mind for numbers by Barbara Oakley. But yeah, don't read them now. Eating some frogs, right? Yeah, read them after you get stuff. That's your reward. Hey, one more thing before we go is that we have an app, a Django app that lets you track your reading. It's pretty similar to Goodreads, but we think that it's kind of more simplistic, minimalistic. And as you know, we're big fans of books and reading. And every week, almost every week on this podcast, we share the books we're reading. And we just made a reading list. We will link below in the show notes of all the books we have been mentioning on the podcast. And that's, of course, a list we will keep growing. And actually, last weekend, we also implemented categories of the books. So when you're on a book at the top, you see now categories and you can easily then see related books, which is pretty interesting or discovered new books added by other users. So, yeah, check out the list. Hope you learn about new, inspiring books that help you in your career and overall personal growth. And of course, feel free to sign up Pibyte's books. It's free. And start sharing your reading and discover new books. All right, thanks for listening. And we will be back next week with a fresh new episode. As always, any feedback? Hit us up. Info I bytes. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pybit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of Python programmers, go to Pibytes community, that's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see see you there and catch you in the next episode.