Niño: I sometimes stay away from goals, and I tend to procrastinate, what do I need to do to keep me motivated?

Sean: This is the struggle of a lot of professionals actually, so you're not alone in this. A lot of people struggle with that. What I realize is if your goals, if the reason why those goals are on your plate is not big enough, then you won't work hard enough. So it may be that the goals are not that big enough for you in your life. It doesn't matter that what you think about it is not big enough. It doesn't matter too much to you. It might be one of the reasons why you tend to procrastinate.

Because if it is something that really matters to you, matters a lot to you and you meditate on it, you think about it, "When would I be able to finish this? When will I be able to do this? What would happen to my life if I actually accomplish these things?" Then you'd do whatever it takes. That's going to be your burning why. Why do I have these goals? Why do I want to achieve that? That's what we call the burning why. If it's burning hot enough, if it's big enough, you're not going to procrastinate.

One of the other things that I do to make sure that I hit my goals is, it sounds so simple, I keep a task list in my calendar and I make sure to clear my calendar for things that I want to do that are important but not urgent. Because there are so many urgent things that would come within your day and it's going to demand time from you. So in order to keep that at bay and make sure you have focus time because when you do deep work you're going to need one hour at least of transitioning into that deep work.

What do I mean by deep work? It's like writing a book, writing a process document, writing your mission vision statement, writing your core values, and I had to do that. I'm the CEO. I was the one who wrote those things for my company. I needed deep work, and that, again, is one hour of transitioning in time. So maybe four to five hours of focus time, that's what I needed to do that.

And in order for me to do that, I have to block off my calendar and tell my team, "This is off-limits, you can't book any meetings here." So that's one of the things that I do to make sure that I am on track with the things that are important and I need to do and I don't procrastinate.

Because sometimes procrastination is also a result of you keeping on accepting work. Anything urgent, just throw it my way and I'm going to accept it and I'm going to work on it. And then you realize the day's gone and that important thing that you wish to do, or you planned to do today, is going to be pushed to another day and you don't have the same inspiration on that day. So those are some of the things that I do to make sure I hit those goals and don't procrastinate.

Your second question: What do I need to do to keep motivated? Always remember why you're doing what you're doing. Always remember why you have those goals in place. There's a reason why you have those goals, those important things, and if they're burning big enough, bright enough, you're going to be motivated to finish them on time.

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