Cover Picture: https://financialbin.com/is-the-slacking-off-culture-at-your-company-your-fault/
My experience on preventing slacking off.
In the beginning, I have talked a little bit about myself. Mostly about motivation and a bit of what I eat and what I do in the gym. However, the most important thing is not how much I train or how healthy I eat. It is all about sticking to your plan in the long term: consistency.
How can you prevent slacking? In short, be consistent! Of course, this is more easily said than done. So how do you do it? This is different for each person. But what I can do is write about how I keep myself from slacking: at home, and in the gym.
Here are three tips that help me to stick to my plan and achieving my goals
- Set realistic goals
The first, and maybe the most important tip is to set realistic goals. If you set goals that you actually cannot achieve, this will only demotivate you and make sure you will not reach your goals in the end. Or as Denzel Washington put it in different words: “Have dreams, but have goals. Because dreams without goals will ultimately fuel self-disappointment.”
Take going to the gym as an example. Let’s say you are working full-time, but you like to do fitness next to it to stay fit. It is not your priority, but you like the idea of working out once in a while. In this scenario, it is essential to make a realistic goal about how many times you can hit the gym every week. If you want to go four times a week, but you end up going only twice or three times a week, this might still demotivate you. However, if you plan your sessions in advance, and see you actually only have time to go three times a week, you can adjust your goal to your reality. In the end, you might be more motivated, because you go as many times as you planned in the end.
- Schedule your time
This might be already a reality to some, but not to everyone. Scheduling your time is extremely important when not trying to slack off. Here I can give you two examples. First of all, planning your meals throughout the week might help you to stay in line with eating healthy. If you do not think ahead about what you should eat, you might end up with not having the right ingredients at home and eating some unhealthy alternative that you do have at home. The second example is again of going to the gym. So we already discussed that you should have realistic goals when deciding how many times a week you want to go to the gym. But you still need to schedule at what days you will go. Schedule it! Do not wake up in the morning and ask yourself the question ‘will I go to the gym today?’, because that is most likely to be answered by a ‘Nah. I will go tomorrow’. Etc etc. Make sure that by Sunday at latest, you have made a schedule what days suits your routine the best. And stick to those days. They may, of course, differ per week, but make sure you have actually planned them in advance. So when you wake up in the morning, you already know if you have to go or not. It is not a question anymore, it is a goal.
- See the bigger picture
This point is a combination of the two earlier ones. It is vital to always have the end-result in mind. If you remind yourself of the bigger picture, you will be less tempted to slack off. For me, when I was losing weight, I always told myself not to eat that pizza because it will not just make me feel uneasy the next day, but it will prolong the time I need to lose weight before I have reached my goal. The same for going to the gym. I never skip a set, because I know that skipping the set is not just letting my muscles stay the same, no, it will cost me a week more to get to the goal I want to reach. Therefore, try to think of the bigger picture, and you will be less likely to slack off.
These three tips are, in my opinion, and experience the most important to prevent yourself from slacking. I have used them many times, and I am still making use of them. Maybe it works different for you, but feel free to interpret these tips in any way you want. As long as it helps you reach your goals faster!
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