One of the hardest things about learning something new is to manage ourselves – to manage our psychology and teach an old dogs new tricks. The most difficult aspect of learning a new behaviour or skill is often the ‘unlearning’ of an old behaviour or habit that is counterproductive to what we want to achieve. 
Our psychology plays havoc especially when we’re creating new habits that challenge our core needs (certainty, significance, love/connection, variety, growth and contribution, adapted from Tony Robbins). So in most cases the theory of doing something new (like practicing swimming on dry land), will in no way compare to actually doing this new thing (actually swimming in water) – there are just too many variables in the reality that theory can’t predict.
Just do it!
The best advice anyone can give is to simply start doing something. Prepare for it by reading and researching a little if you want – but the longer you wait to DO, the more difficult it will be come. Everything that is normal for you today, was probably once difficult and scary. You can only make something more normal by tackling your fear and just doing it.
Rewarding Good Behaviour and Punishing Bad Behaviour
One of the best ways to support the creation of new habits, is to manipulate yourself. You need to reward good behaviour and punish bad behaviour. This way you will quickly gravitate towards what you like (your reward which is a result of good behaviour) and move away from what you don’t like (your punishment resulting from bad behaviour).
An example could be cleaning – if you’ve stuck to your good behaviour that supports creating new habits (whether these are health habits, productivity habits, business habits, or anything else) you can pay someone else to clean your house.
If you’ve indulged in bad behaviour (say you slept in when you should have gone for a bike ride) you’ll have to clean your house yourself.
A friend of mine, who is a very successful forex trader, has used these techniques to reinforce the right trading behaviour – he is now a millionaire.
Make sure you share your rewards and punishments with someone who can check whether you’re sticking to your plan – cheating the plan would mean cheating yourself.
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While my mantra version of ‘Just do it!’ has an extra “@!$*& word in it, the principle is the same. If anyone as a kid didn’t do that homework and got the horrid feeling, but then felt amazing the next time they actually did do it on time then you can start to understand the ‘just do it’ way of working.
If you just get it done, you can do other things and not have the things you should be doing clouding the feeling. Think about when you take your shoes and socks off after a long day and get that pure relaxed feeling… well just *£@&*& getting your work done can be close to that for the mind
Little rewards are also good and I found http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/03/next-big-idea-unleash-the-beast.php yesterday which is a good way to get your thinking hat on too.
Keep up the great writing… I look forward to reading more!
David
Thanks David.
The homework analogy is a really good one, especially considering that homework is often the start of bad habits and procrastination.
In year 6 I had an amazing teacher who taught me the basics of the 80/20 rule – I only had to do my homework once per semester but could get 80% of the results from it if I prepared it well and presented it to the class. That way I always got good grades for participation and homework, but was never checked because of the good reputation from the well thought out and well presented homework. That method got me through school with great results and minimal effort
The same teacher later taught me critical thinking/analysis and how to structure my thoughts and arguments – some other valuable skills that have reaped benefits ever since.