I get asked a lot, “Hey Tai, how do you stay so focused all the time, you know, how do you stop procrastinating?”
Well it’s simple.
You have to stop thinking about the work that you have to do because then you'll want to keep procrastinating and putting it off.
Too many people focus on, "Okay, when should I do this? How should I do it more efficiently?"
Forget all that.
First, you have to only think about the thing you want.
The end game result, "Keep your eye on the prize." as they say.
People misinterpret what that means. You have to take it literally. What's the prize? It has to be specific.
All the things you're procrastinating about come from basically a misalignment in your brain of something that I call the reward versus pain ratio.
When pain becomes too much of your focus, and the reward is not contemplated enough, then the pain gets too high. It's like a scale.
When the pain gets too high and the reward gets to low, you'll always procrastinate. There's no solution. No one has an answer for you. You can read all kinds of books. There's no answer. The second the reward/pain ratio is out of whack, you start putting things off, and procrastinating more and more.
Like Mark Cuban told me, when he was poor, he used to drive around Dallas, Texas and look at rich people's houses. He would have very specific rewards in mind and be like, "Oh, I want to pool like that," or "Oh, I want a house with this many square feet." and that would keep him motivated to keep grinding on.
It doesn't have to be all material things. It can other stuff. Like for me, what I think about is specific stuff. I never want to have someone to tell me what to do or how to work, so that's why I became an entrepreneur. I'm like, "You know what? I don't like people telling me what to do." I keep that in mind sometimes. When I don't feel like working, I'm like, "Oh, but do I want to go back to a life where if I want to go travel the world, I got to ask somebody."
This is the same thing with working out. People focus too much on the workout. It doesn't matter that much which workout routines you do. Diet doesn’t matter that much either.
There's people gaining and losing weight as vegans. Some people gaining and losing weight as Paleo. It's the same with workout routines. Some people are doing high intensity stuff. Some people are being cardio people. Some people lift weights.
At the end of the day, the people who stick to the routine are the ones who get in shape, period.
That's why if you focus on the painful event you’ll be more likely to give up. Ask yourself, what's the reward for you being in great shape? People just get too caught up in the process, and the tiny details, they never follow through enough. Keep your eye on the prize.
It’s all about changing your mental perception of what challenges you. It’s all a mental game. Same for reading. People don't read because they associate it with pain, because the school system reprogrammed our brain to associate reading with pain.
For me, reading has brought me so many tangible benefits. When I see a book, I get excited. I've changed the association patterns in my brain. So, books appear to me to be a pleasurable thing. No pain or whatever, they're just rewards. That’s why I can read a lot.
The Rock says, one thing that changed his life when he was like five years old, is his dad would bring him to the gym. His dad was a bodybuilder and an athlete, and he said his dad rewired his brain because his dad wouldn't let him workout with him. His dad would tell him he was too young.
His dad actually rewired his brain as a five-year-old and he says to this day, when he hears the sound of gym equipment, he gets happy because he's associated it with rewards. That was the time he was with his dad. He didn't think about the pain. With The Rock, one of the reason he says he's diligent in the gym is because he has good connotations, or good associations, with being in the gym.
Like if you're worried about starting your own business, and you go, "Well, what happens if that doesn't work out?" Then you're focused on the process. That will come later. Get your butt to the gym. Get started on the company, then you'll figure out the process as you go.
The visualization process is what you want to focus on.